If Threads, which has the biggest userbase of any instance, is allowed to connect with Lemmy, their communities will naturally become the most trafficked (embrace).
Over time, the Lemmy userbase will largely move everything to the communities with the most activity. Facebook could also add its own proprietary features that Lemmy users wouldn’t be able to see or use without the Lemmy devs somehow found ways to enable compatibility (extend).
Then, after a while, Facebook could simply say, “Eh, ActivityPub isn’t worth it,” and turn it off, leaving us without most of the communities we’ve become accustomed to and without most of the users we’ve come to know through those communities (extinguish).
This is known as “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”.
Embrace a competing product and enable compatibility with the product. This may seem like some sort of goodwill gesture, but it’s not. Companies are in it to make a profit, and any users not using their product is profit lost.
Extend the capabilities of your own product beyond that of your competitor’s product, creating compatibility issues. Some existing users may jump ship to the “better” product because of this, and new users will be pressed to use the “better” product because of the compatibility issues.
Extinguish the competition by disabling compatibility with your competitor’s product after they’ve lost users and stopped growing since you offer a better product with more features.
By using this method, you may successfully kill any potential competitor before they become a problem, nipping its growth in the bud.
You can find more information and examples on the the Wikipedia article about this method: en.wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis…
laverabe@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No one knows the exact way Facebook will try to destroy the fediverse, but I guarantee you they will try.
It challenges the foundation of their entire companies’ profit model. If they lose total control of the social network they will be out of business as quick as you can say Myspace.
guacupado@lemmy.world 9 months ago
lmao you guys are cringe as hell.
whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Disagree entirely.
For one, Meta has diversified enough that it’s going to be nearly impossible for them to pull a MySpace. They have Insta, Facebook (blue app) and WhatsApp with a billion+ users each. Even Threads on its own is probably sustainable enough to carry them for a decade, and though far, far down the list, they’ve branched into other business like with the Quest. Except maybe pixelfed, there isn’t really even a direct competitor (other than just the vague “social media”) to Meta’s properties.
Second, I don’t think this is any indicator that Meta views the fedi as a threat. Had they, they probably would have just simply tried to buy their way in somewhere, as they did with Instagram and WhatsApp (this is definitely their MO, Facebook is the only true Meta product.) Further, I am not even sure how so many are making the case that the fediverse is somehow inevitable. Projects don’t succeed on pure ideology, and in particular with social media not only do you have to do the technicals right including building a product that users actually want to use, you also have to get the right combination of deliberate community building and sheer luck to get it to stick. Already, the entire point of the fediverse is at odds with how the majority of people want to use social media. With fediverse stuff, you’re expected to curate and deliberately shape your experience. I’ve found more use for blocks and mutes on Lemmy, which is ostensibly the smallest social media site I’ve ever used, and by a large margin. The default these days for most people are Instagram and TikTok - just open the app and watch whatever is served up.
So we’re basically starting at a point that the fediverse is offering a niche product with technical hurdles (which, are very small, but it doesn’t take much) for users to even get on, they’re going to have to spend a decent amount of time to getting to a usable product, find out they joined the wrong instance and rebuild that, and the communities seem to be made up of the gotcha police half of the time. And then there are just the pure numbers. Even with multiple external exogenous events (like reddit had with Digg, for example) from direct analogues to Lemmy and Mastodon, Lemmy is barely growing and Mastodon probably gained about as many users last month as Threads did while I was writing this.
This whole debate on the fediverse is very “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day in your life, but for me? It was Tuesday.” The fediverse, for its part, couldn’t be a better stooge for Meta at the moment. They can say to regulators “look at us, we’re open” and then watch as the fedi preemptively blocks millions of users from an introduction to the fedi.
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
Meta may be many times bigger, but that does not mean they are not interested in killing all competition. That is just the megalomaniac mind set.
Not sure a buy-in option exists with the Fediverse.
Meta may not even care if they get partially de-federated. They can still claim they are part of the Fediverse with a simpler start-up. People who were considering trying the Fediverse may think they already have with their Threads account.