do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience?

Of course not. But it doesn’t on Mastodon either. Or Kbin. Or even Lemmy.

If someone is on vacation when I make my post on Mastodon, there is a good chance they will never see it. The post isn’t going to be recommended to them - the feed is chronological. They would have to specifically search me out and scroll way back to see my posts.

If my post doesn’t make it to “Hot” on Kbin or Lemmy, by default it dies. The only ones who will see it are those sorting by “New”. That’s a fraction of the complete audience. That’s just how algorithms work.

Facebook and Twitter have their own recommendation algorithm of some kind. Threads does too, from what I’ve seen of it. While I wouldn’t expect my stuff to go viral, frankly my friends are more likely to care and react to a post I make there. I don’t use Facebook anymore, but I had plenty of interactions when I did use it. You will never reach your entire audience unless your entire audience reaches out for you - but on average the people I know are more likely to care about me than some strangers on my Mastodon instance. So I’d rather post where they can see it.

So, you’ve read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did?

Yes, that was… like, my entire point. Everything you just described will happen with or without the fedipact. If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they’d still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.

But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you’re going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you’re going to have… well, everyone else.

People are going to leave and go to the side that federates with Meta, because that’s where the network effect is strongest. Again, I don’t care that someone on my Mastodon instance got married. I mean, congratulations, I guess… but if my childhood best friend is getting married, I’m more invested. I don’t want to use Meta’s stuff if I have another option; after all, I did quit Instagram and Facebook cold turkey. But I would jump at the ability to have those moments while still keeping Zuck off my computer.

So, like I said, this is going to lead to 2 fediverses. One that federates with Meta, and one that doesn’t. And “normal” non-techie people are going to want to go to where they get the most eyeballs on their stuff - that means somewhere that federates with Meta.

Meta could still start extending and extinguishing. But they could do that anyway. That is a completely separate subject from the fedipact as designed. I agree that it’s a problem, but the fedipact being executed will only speed up the process, bisecting the entire project and turning it back into a niche thing for nerds. You know, like XMPP or IRC.

Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project.

Staying away from Meta literally has zero impact on what Meta does. Meta will do whatever.

The choice is if Mastodon tries to adapt to be compatible or not. Breaking ActivityPub for compatibility with Meta is a losing proposition, and one that we shouldn’t even start. But that’s the fight we should be having; holding firm if/when Meta stops holding to the standard.

The fedipact is self-defeating and won’t stop Meta from being Meta. The only thing the fedipact will do is ruin the fediverse writ large. The true way to preventing an XMPP situation is by having maintainers hold firm and act just as they did before Meta joined; no feature creep, no goalpost moving. Break EEE at “extend”, not “embrace”.