The worry about EEE is actually not my primary concern at the moment. And it’s not data collection either, though I hate what Meta is doing there.

I’m not interested in Threads “content” on my front page here. And boy will it ever be all over the “All” page thanks to Threads users outnumbering all of the Fediverse by many magnitudes. The poor algorithm is not going to show you any new Lemmy content anymore with all the engagement Threads posts is going to get.

Then there are the comments in communities here. If you’ve felt happy that this community has better atmosphere and discussions than the dreg you’d be served on Reddit, just wait until we open the door for hundreds of millions of Facebook commenters.

I love the community that is building on Lemmy. If I wanted to participate in the community on Meta I’d be on Instagram or Facebook or Threads.

But I don’t. That’s why I’m here.

There is also !lemmy411@lemmy.ca. And lemmyverse.net/communities as mentioned above.

You’re right. Going down through the levels of “okay, and why?” works on a theoretical level but requires both the person asking the right why-question and a level of intellectual honesty from both parties that is incredibly hard to find.

It’s not a bad approach for questioning your own beliefs though, if you can muster the strength to be honest with yourself.

This is a non sequiter argument. It does not necessarily follow that good content comes from a large userbase. In fact, both of those things are rarely true at the same time. points vaguely at social media

I was coming at it from the perspective of an ex-Reddit user. The main appeal of that site to me was (is?) the size of the userbase and the fact it meant you had access to literally any type of person at your fingertips. Every niche interest was represented, there were people of all ages and walks of life and you could find help or others in the same boat no matter what tech issue you faced or rare ailment you contracted. This type of “content” if you can call it that is only available once the population reaches a certain critical mass. Smaller communities are of course more conducive to civil discussion, high-effort posting and actual conversations, but looking at the popularity of that social media you’re gesturing towards I’m not sure that’s what the majority of people are even after.

It’s not that I want to attract Facebook users to Lemmy, it’s more that Threads as an alternative could well siphon other users who might have otherwise come over here, ending up preventing this site from reaching critical mass. Then again, maybe this particular fear is overexaggerated right now since - as you say - Threads is competing with Twitter and not Reddit/Lemmy.

I find the kind of stuff posted on Insta to be vapid enough or sufficiently commercial that I feel no need to interact with it. I probably still wouldn’t interact with it even if it happens to show up here.

I think the problem is twofold here really. First is the All feed, which by function of how the engagement algorithm works would instantly get flooded with content from Threads if they end up federated, drowning out the content from here. It would not be a matter of deciding not to engage with the post from Threads and keeping scrolling. You wouldn’t browse Lemmy anymore, it would just be Threads and Meta all the way down.

Second is the comment sections to any discussion even on communities here would likely get flooded with Facebook comments. By sheer volume of users they have already too many of them would find their way here. And it is again not exactly the type of - let’s call it “discourse” - I’m chomping at the bit to partake in.

More likely, the play now is to capitalize on the discontent and missteps over at Twitter, and capture the folks over there who are leaving¹.

I think you’re absolutely right and I think if Zuckerberg even knows what “Lemmy” is then it’s because somebody mentioned it in passing when briefing him about ActivityPub. It’s clear trying to usurp Twitter has been planned for a long time and you can understand why. If Lemmy was involved in the thought process at all, it would only be as inspiration for how Threads could in the future be connected to yet another new platform which in that case would outcompete Reddit, which is a site I’m sure Zuckerberg would very much like to usurp as well.

I do, however, think corporate engagement here IS valuable. In the same way that social media teams at your favorite retail brands engage on the Big Socials, I would also welcome their engagement here as well because its another avenue to interact with the brand as a potential, current or disgruntled customer.

But social media teams at your favorite brands don’t connect on social media in order to contact disgruntled customers or discuss consumer concerns, they do it because it’s great, cheap advertising. RyanAir doesn’t use twitter to ask customers if the uncomfortable seats injured their backs, they make funny tweets because they believe it will sell more cheap plane tickets.

Hell, even if the social media admin appears to be discussing actual issues with consumers I doubt those issues would go anywhere afterwards. The big brands aren’t interested in consumer concerns but they probably wouldn’t mind looking like they are since that would make people more sympathetic towards them and more likely to chose their product.

Make popcorn and watch the theater. I just read Twitter is suing Meta already, so you know this is gonna be fun!

Can we arrange for a cage to be built in the courtroom and schedule it so Zuck and Elon give their testimonies in between the rounds of beating the shit out of each other?

Public transport is the real killer for me. It seems bizarre to me now that there was a time I could stand on a bus or train and comfortably just hold the support handrail with a bare hand and not wash it afterwards or anything. These days I avoid them at all costs and still gotta carry disinfectant for mental health purposes.

I like the client-side interface and really appreciate the ability to follow users but Kbin seems to have some backend issues still. Remember that Kbin is at an extremely early stage of development and really wasn’t ready for mass adoption (it’s a couple of months old!)

Oh god the lingering germophobia as a result of the pandemic shining a massive spotlight on surface contamination and spread vectors has completely ruined me.

My first thought was AstroTurf too but honestly Lemmy is still small enough that I wonder if Meta even cares enough for it to pay for astroturfing here. They got more signups in a couple of hours than Lemmy got users in three years, and by several magnitudes even. Plus it’s an inherently hostile demographic for them. They’re better off investing in positive posting on Reddit, which I’m sure is what they’re already doing.

They’ll kill it by having the largest userbase, and therefore the most and best content, and then finally defederating and forcing everyone to join Threads. At least that’s what they’ll most likely attempt to do. It remains to be seen whether they’ll be successful. The EEE approach has been used before and is well documented. Read more on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

It’s run through the Open Collective, and is also run by Ruud who runs one of the larger Mastodon instances as well as some other stuff on the Fediverse I believe. They’re a fairly trusted actor in the space and I think pretty transparent with everything they do which is probably another reason many people flocked there.

That’s correct though account migration is planned for some point in the future, or at least noted as a desirable feature by the Devs. Maybe even linking accounts across instances?

Having to resubscribe to all your communities is annoying but I imagine third party apps could streamline that process when they get released/refined.