I’m just curious what you folks think. The whole idea of the Fediverse seems to go against everything Meta has stops for with their existing platforms (Facebook and Instagram).
What are they after? Are they going to try and infiltrate it so they can get people’s data and content? Are they trying to monetize it? It just doesn’t add up. I feel like most people on the Fediverse already would agree that we don’t want Meta’s platforms to access our content.
Please excuse my ignorance if it doesn’t work like I think it does. I’m relatively new to the Fediverse myself.
Disagree with a lot of the stances here.
Meta has been hit hard by a series of failures over the last decade.
Continually missing first place, the company has broadly pivoted towards more open partnership in order to boost their offerings.
For example, their LLM weights being released to researchers when the product was clearly behind OpenAI and even Google.
Playing nice with federated networks fits into this.
Meta is betting that open platforms do well enough to corner a non-insignificant part of the market and are hoping to leverage compatibility with it in order to protect and differentiate their fledgling product from competition.
None of this means they aren’t still going to try to siphon every detail they can to maximize ad revenue for users.
But they aren’t trying to kill or sabotage the fediverse (which they rightfully don’t seriously see as competition in itself). They are hoping it is successful enough that it helps give them an edge against walled garden networks backed by competitors’ money.
In general, expect to see more openness from Meta in the coming years for much of what they do. They finally realized they aren’t Apple and can’t get away with siloing their products within the market.
I can agree with all you are saying, while also agreeing with the stance that Meta’s presence is corrosive by its’ very nature.
There will be a sugar rush up front, diabetes down the road.
EDIT: They WILL find a way to insert themselves more severely if and when this thing grows.