[NullInvictus]

I’m not really excited about this; Meta has no strong incentive to be a long term good neighbor in the fediverse, but plenty of incentive to engage in poor behavior. No matter how sincere or well meaning leadership is now, a quarterly loss or stagnant profit will eventually push them to turn to some market capture or embrace, extend, extinguish behavior.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. A number of instances are prepping to partially or fully block Threads from the get-go.

Even without Meta, I’m not excited for another 1M+ instance. My experience is that the larger an instance is, the worse it is. Less community, worse moderation, more bad actors hiding in plain sight. You just can’t toss people into a generalist million people scrum and expect them to form a digital community.

If you’re on mastodon.social, you’re not experiencing the best of the fediverse IMO. Find a small instance of your interest (<500 people) and interact with the local timeline. People on my instance recognize me, make in jokes, I chat with the admin and mods, it’s like actual digital neighborhood. It’s really the closest we’ve gotten back to forums and I don’t think dumping a bucket of FAANG-style corporate water on it is the answer.

[wmf]

I think of Threads as a red team the Fediverse doesn't have to pay for.