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   Fancy Sandwiches (fancysandwiches@urbanists.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 13:24:05 JST Fancy Sandwiches

   in reply to

   So yeah, technically speaking it's impossible for Threads to inject ads into your feed as long as you're not on Threads. However, Wendy's (and literally any other brand) can use the tools they get on Threads, plus classic viral marketing techniques, to get their posts into your feed. Threads will be the largest instance on the Fediverse by a couple orders of magnitude, the influence they will have will be outsized.

   #Meta #Threads #FediPact #DefederateMeta #Facebook #Instagram

   • Embed this notice
     Fancy Sandwiches (fancysandwiches@urbanists.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 13:24:06 JST Fancy Sandwiches

     in reply to

     "But I would never follow Wendy's!" you shout at your screen. Yes, *you're* not going to follow Wendy's but if someone you follow boosts or replies to a Wendy's ad, you're going to see the ad in your feed.

     Look at the Wendy's Threads profile, they get hundreds of replies and thousands of likes. I don't know how many boosts, Threads doesn't say. If they pay Meta to boost a post they'll get even more likes, replies, and boosts, increasing the chances of an ad reaching your feed.

     #Meta #Threads

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     Fancy Sandwiches (fancysandwiches@urbanists.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 13:24:07 JST Fancy Sandwiches

     I want to take a minute and address "Meta cannot possibly inject ads into your feed" . Yes, technically speaking it would be effectively impossible for Threads to inject ads into your feed. But y'all are forgetting how ads on social platforms work. Every post from a brand is an ad, whether or not they're paying Meta to forcibly put it into someone's feed. If you follow Wendy's you're going to see their ads, and Wendy's isn't going to need to pay Meta for you to see the content.

     #Meta #Threads

   • Embed this notice
     Fancy Sandwiches (fancysandwiches@urbanists.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 14:07:38 JST Fancy Sandwiches

     in reply to

     • Tokyo Outsider (337ppm)

     @tokyo_0 I would not be surprised if they offered servers an improved frontend to Mastodon that was fully instrumented with analytics and ads.

   • Embed this notice
     Fancy Sandwiches (fancysandwiches@urbanists.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 14:07:40 JST Fancy Sandwiches

     • Tokyo Outsider (337ppm)

     @tokyo_0 Yeah, the old slip some ads in the RSS feed trick. I do think that they will try to throw their weight around as the largest server in the fediverse and try to get other servers to agree to putting ads in the feed for a cut of the profits. I also think they'll try to have ads (or at least some mechanism that would enable ads) put into the AP spec.

     I don't think they'll do this right away, because it's going to be a lot harder to get folks to defederate after a while.