I totally agree with him. This will bring more people to the fediverse once they realize they can interact with their friends on Threads
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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No, this will get people to leave Mastodon for Threads in droves. Really all Facebook is doing here is leaching users away from Mastodon. The average user doesn't know or care about the "perks" of non-Facebook Mastodon instances that Eugene is talking about. They will go with the service with the most name recognition every time, rather than trust an independent, small-time instance operator.
Threads is just Facebook with ActivityPub compatibility and Facebook ads and tracking, so basically they are pulling people away from decentralized networks and back to being under their control. Then the network effects Eugene is talking about will kick in, but moving people away from Mastodon and toward Threads.
Then Facebook can quietly drop support for Mastodon compatibility. Embrace (is done), Extend (with search, advertising, and tracking), Extinguish, cut compatibility with non-Facebook instances and sink the decentralized network, then finally Enshittification.
Threads advertises itself as "interoperable with the Fediverse", which will fuel curiosity in some users. And Mastodon isn't only small-time operated instances. Creators of Vivaldi web browser created their Mastodon instance and bundle it with their browser account. Mozilla is preparing to do the same. Medium and Flipboard are another examples.
And of course, we have official instances of Mastodon, Pixelfed or e.g. /kbin.
Curious users can find the fediverse anyway if there were interested in changing social media platforms. Meta has NO good reasonable use to integrate the fediverse. Compared to Metas cumulative social media user size we are but a tiny hub of users. So here again: there is NO good reason for them to just causally go "oh hi guys, let's be friends!" The only reason is to extinguish competition before it gets larger. It's like Starbucks slapping down a store next to your local coffee shop because "wow we both like coffee, let's be friends so our customers can enjoy coffee together and have a talk!" It's a deceptive strategy.