The arguments I’ve heard about tracking etc are misguided and don’t understand the actual risks.

Firstly, posts on the fediverse are already likely being consumed by advertising platforms like Facebook & Google. It would be trivial for big tech companies to setup relays that act as scrapers.

Secondly, the value in platform’s tracking individuals is for advertising. There is no mechanism for these platforms to identify you browsing the we if your instance federated with threads. Your instance won’t share cookie sessions etc with threads. It doesn’t increase your exposure.

Thirdly, these platforms have the know how to deal with spam and they will be incentivised to share that tech with other federated instances.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is an evil company. But I haven’t heard a decent argument as to why them joining the fediverse is a bad thing. We always have the option to defederate in the future.

Change my mind.

  • sveri@lemmy.sveri.deEnglish
    81·
    1 year ago

    While I agree with all of that, I wonder if it’s not a good thing regarding users.

    Lemmy right now feels like the reddit I joined a decade ago, content and user wise.

    And these are the people I want to interact with. While reddit today, like Facebook and Twitter, have a very large user group I don’t want to interact with. Mostly memes and boomer talk, nothing original.

    • mim@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Not sure if I understand…

      Wouldn’t that mean you’d prefer the fediverse to be separate from Meta as well?

    • Revan343@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      But that’s not all Reddit has; think of the more niche communities, like DIY, knitting, rock climbing, game-specific subs, basically anything hobby-related. Also many of the city-related communities. Those are the places people here generally miss from Reddit, and those are the places where Meta will try to make their community the largest, and will use to pull people to their instances.

      Like yeah, losing /r/trebuchetmemes is no great loss. But there are other communities where the larger userbase is beneficial, and losing those is a great loss.