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   Srijit Kumar Bhadra (srijit@shonk.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Dec-2023 17:54:58 JST Srijit Kumar Bhadra

   • Srijit Kumar Bhadra

   John Gruber shares his insights regarding ActivityPub based Fediverse (which he appropriately refers as Mastodon) in this post.I enjoy Mastodon, and love Ivory, but Mastodon has seemingly peaked in popularity. It’s a niche for nerds. I think it’s a successful niche for nerds — I still see a stream of interesting content in my feed there, and enjoy thoughtful engagement from readers — but Mastodon has seemingly no mainstream relevance, and I don’t think ever will. Regular people do not want to use social networks without algorithmic feeds, and do not want to use social networks whose basic premise they do not understand.Now that we know that Threads has begun federating via ActivityPub, we will end up with a confluence of two opposite cultures. One one side there are huge number of regular people who depend on algorithmic feeds and on the other side there are a niche set of nerds who may mostly believe the following, as outlined in one of my earlier posts, without caring for mainstream relevance.Social networking in Fediverse is like a little argy-bargy (talkathon) in a village square or a downtown or a pub or a corner of a road. Here one talks publicly while being fully aware that the content is ephemeral and not archived.One would not mind being overheard in a local or even remote community. The expectation is that good content will be appreciated and carried forward by humans instead of appearing in a newspaper or getting discovered by searching though archived and persistent databases. There are no third parties monetizing the conversations. In most cases, the conversations are unlikely to have the polish and maturity for a publication.I am not considering the common users who are active on both Fediverse and Threads.
   
   Instagram and Threads are products of a profit driven organization with advertisements as the main source of revenue. So there are recommendation algorithms to drive user engagement, through personalization of content and, hence, revenue. There is nothing wrong here. It is a business model. Since algorithms play a key role in driving user engagement and visibility of posts, conflict and polarization can dominate personalization due to dopamine effect.
   
   So a post in Fediverse, when reflected in Threads, will become the feed of the recommendation algorithms while being exposed to the visibility of the mainstream audience. The long term outcome and impact is unknown as of now. We have wait and watch this social experiment.
   
   #Mastodon #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Threads
   
   cc: @srijit@mas.to

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     Srijit Kumar Bhadra (srijit@shonk.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 02:15:03 JST Srijit Kumar Bhadra

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     • Srijit Kumar Bhadra

     Unanswered questions
     
     I appreciate the concerns and possibilities stated here. It is not just about Instagram or Threads. Any profit driven commercial social media will focus only on the following:1. Obtaining your personal data to sell, and2. More eyeballs in front of more ads.I still do not have clarity about the business motivation of Meta in this case. I am aware that if Meta has to maximize its profits through Threads, it has to find ways to maximise data harvesting or data exploitation. As on today Threads has 141 million users. Bluesky currently has over 2.4 million users, and the waitlist has ballooned to over 1.9 million people. Fediverse has 13.84 million users with 1.73 million active monthly users.
     
     Is Meta so concerned that this small user base could create momentum on a variety of issues because those issues don't typically disappear via an algorithm like they do in other spaces? By supressing the voice of this small user base will advertising revenue of Meta increase? There is already lot of anit-capitalism in commercial social media. Many users of Fediverse are also active in other for-profit social media. Will Threads also interface with Bluesky? Or will Bluesky and Fediverse become interoperable in near future?
     
     I still prefer to wait and watch this space with caution. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" or "embrace, extend, and exterminate" (EEE) cannot be ruled out since my level of visibility is very limited. Although Meta has apparently taken steps to enhance transparency and trust, there are still concerns and negative perceptions regarding its trustworthiness, particularly related to data privacy and user trust.
     
     #Mastodon #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Threads #Meta #EEE
     
     cc: @srijit@mas.to