this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Can you explain what that means in this context? How does defederating Threads prevent Meta from extinguishing anything?
Or what Google does right now with Chrome and web standards.
For those unaware of Google’s latest web browser malarkey: Web Environment Integrity
EFF/Cory Doctorow/Jacob Hoffman-Andrews: Your Computer Should Say What You Tell It To Say
The XMPP article was good, thanks!
But how would defederating prevent any of that?
It would make Threads unable to see content from instances defederating it and vice versa, preventing the Embrace step.
That's a common misconception actually, any and all data available via federation is already public and easily scrapable even without running an instance of one's own. Defederating only hides (in this case) Threads content from users on the instance doing the defederating, but the data is still public. Not to mention copies of it would still be fully available on any extant federated instances.
But they would still be unable to embrace (and, by extension, extend and extinguish) because users from Threads would be unable to interact with users from other instances. Basically, they'd be unable to get rid of a potential competitor using the EEE method.
But how could interoperability lead to extinguishing? That's the part I don't understand. By what means could Threads "extinguish" the network of instances that stay federated?
The same way we prevented any of that up ’till now: by doing our own thing on our own terms.
It prevents that specific strategy that would culminate in extinguishing. The idea being to siphon users away from other platforms, then add features that other platforms won't or can't implement, and use that to create an image of their own platform being better, having more features. If they succeed at having a lot of users oblivious to what's happening, they will use those features, and when they don't work for people on other platforms, they will blame the other platforms instead of their own, further cultivating the image that other platforms are broken/unreliable. In the end, they leave other platforms unable to compete, forcing users to either have a "broken"/incomplete experience, or migrate to their platforms. (Or leave the fediverse entirely). Or they can simply stop federating at that point, after users have left for their platform, cutting off the rest of the fediverse from content hosted on their platform.
The way defederating prevents a strategy like that is by cutting them off before they can get a foothold - they can't make users feel left out if they don't get to influence their experience in the first place.
Also, if the best people are on the instances threads can't see, their userers will feel left out.