The past few weeks have been interesting over at Mastodon where some of the community has been screaming and loosing their minds about the possibility of Meta becoming part of the Fediverse. Bloonface summarized my feelings about it perfectly in the following Toot:
Let’s just say the blunt truth here: It’s not going to be Meta or Project 92 or whatever that kills fedi, it’s the fact that every time anyone suggests a way in which normal people can use it in the same way that normal people use social networks, the entire network shits the bed and starts screaming about keeping the outsiders out. But then also the same people heap judgment on people for still using Twitter when Twitter actually gives them what they want
People have reason not to trust Meta because of their behavior in the past, and we have extreme examples where Opensource protocols were subverted (XAMPP) and the opensource clients killed off. However, we also have the example of AOL which was a closed garden opening up their network and users to the Internet which introduced a ton of people to the Open Internet and while there were initial hiccups and adjustments required in the long run it was good for the internet to ingest the closed garden into an open network.
One of the biggest reasons for people sticking with Facebook/Whatsapp/whatever is the cost of switching and the Network effect. Basically, what that means is that people use a social network/site because their friends are already using it and it is difficult to get them to switch. I have tried getting my family and friends to switch to Signal from Whatsapp but since most folks are on Whatsapp it becomes a chicken and egg problem. We can’t move there because all the friends are here. Having Meta become a part of the Fediverse would allow me to move to a new network/server and still be able to connect with my friends / relatives on FaceBook. This interoperability lowers the switching costs allowing users the freedom to change servers without loosing the userbase/network they have build up on the old system/
Cory Doctorow has written a fantastic article about Facebookâs war on switching costs that goes into detail on how reducing the switching costs and increasing interoperability is a good idea.
Unfortunately, there are folks who think that only the chosen few should be allowed to use ‘their’ networks and are screaming their heads off about something that is not even a formal discussion yet. Meta has had a few exploratory calls with Mastodon server admins and that’s it. No one has ‘betrayed’ the users or sold out or whatever. I can’t remember how many folks have been referencing that post about ‘Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution’ that I wrote about a while ago (not linking to the original post because I don’t what to increase its visibility). It is the same standard whining for a certain part of the user group that always tries to gatekeep everything and it is annoying.
I would love to have everyone move to Mastodon so that I don’t have to log into Twitter to catch up with folks. Currently not everyone is on Mastodon which means that either I stop following their work or I log into Twitter to read what they are doing till they migrate. If Twitter federates then I wouldn’t have to do that, I could read their posts from the comfort of my own server. Same thing with Facebook, I don’t log in much there but that means that I miss a lot of updates from family who still use it actively.
However, the advantage of having an open federated network is that even if some of the admins have a hissy fit and block the Meta (or any other servers) nothing is preventing their users from deciding to move their accounts to a more sensibly managed server as they are not locked in.
– Suramya