I suspect the fedi-collective has more negotiating power in this moment than it realizes. We may as well make some asks, see how Meta responds, and they in turn will see how the public, the media and the regulators respond to them in this bold new era of pervasive Big Tech skepticism.
Money can mitigate the risk of Threads:
‘coopting the fediverse’: $200k for Test Suite. ‘overburdening moderators’: $200k for moderation. ‘locking in users’: $200k for Nomadic Identity
A bit of internet reparations.
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I appreciate your perspective but will have to respectfully disagree.
My position has evolved as I’ve spent more time as a user in the fediverse and federated protocols such as ActivityPub. The fediverse needs to stay purpose-driven, and not profit-driven. I just don’t see how a for-profit entity can be good stewards of the protocol, their priorities cannot begin or end with anything but return on investment. Even if they were to provide some seed money to other fediverse projects. If their users never migrate to not-for-profit providers, if they never fully federate the other direction, if they fork AP instead of sticking to spec; have we gained anything by federating with them?
Sure seems like by federating with Meta, we just are allowing them to co-opt AP as their version of Bluesky’s ATProto. Those of us on AP that aren’t on threads just become the “data privacy zealots” that aren’t @threads.net and are fenced off from the rest of the network by default. Not unlike the people running their own PDS on bluesky. Federated but not decentralized, isn’t the mission of the fediverse IMO.
But this still begs the opposite question, have we gained anything by de-federating with threads? I sure hope my ideals of a not-for-profit social web, are not as pie-in-the-sky as they seem.
I agree in full!
I’ve thought quite a bit about corporate funding of the fediverse. The only possibility good way that I currently see is if there’s a not-for-profit acting as a middle man to dispense the funds. And that not-for-profit can’t voice opinions on how the fediverse is developed. Even this is wishful thinking.
I’ve actually given thought to creating this non-for-profit but I don’t really know how to get started or get attention for significant donations.
Noooooooooooooo thanks
Who decides who gets the money? Meta? Isn’t this literally the worst case EEE scenario that people are worried about? They’re going to buy the changes they want?
Funnily enough, a couple posts above I saw this and was wondering when the next infinitely naive take about meta will roll in and see! We have it.
We dont deal with the devil. Not before, not now, not in the future. We dont want corporate shitholes to infest our space and no amount of sugarcoating will change that.
Meta can run a vanilla mastodon instance if they really want us to take them in, provide upstream issues and prs and become a valuable member of our space.
For those thinging „yeah, if they promised, in writing, that they will never EEE or push ads or push their values onto us“. That is impossible (because they dwarf us and their right to defederate from any instance makes them all powerful) and even if it weren’t they would try and find ways around it because of fucking shareholder primacy. Do you want shareholder primacy in the fediverse where we have stakeholder primacy by definition? Think about it.
You can’t trust any of the ‘mega-corp’ so these donations will have handcuffs.
One thing not said explicitly is that the Fediverse needs a funding model and I believe it will die without one.
I know people are down voting this because of what you suggested. But I don’t think we should be afraid of taking about money and funding it. The Fediverse is not free to run, or develop, so without money coming in, it’s going to die. We shouldn’t he afraid to talk about any options of funding. Even a conversation like this, where a lot of people are against it, can lead to other ideas that are more palpable.
Motherfucker I hate money! The hell is wrong with you?
