Joe Biden's official account is now connected to the Fediverse, thanks to Threads. We'll see if anything comes of it.

Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.

  • leadore@kbin.social
    192·
    7 months ago

    Personally I hope they never do, though it does look likely. Like many pre-November '22 old-time Mastodon et.al. fedizens, I came to the fediverse specifically because I didn’t want to have anything with FB/Meta/Twitter or the other commercial, “engagement”-based, enshittified social media.

    It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified, with half of it eagerly welcoming their new overlords (why don’t they just join Threads?) and the other half resisting. The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

    • Sean Tilley@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      84·
      7 months ago

      It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified

      As someone who has repeatedly seen cities become gentrified (first Peoria, Illinois, then San Francisco, then Phoenix), I get what you’re trying to say, but also don’t think it’s an appropriate metaphor.

      The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

      Frankly, I think this is a bit melodramatic. The Anti-Threads part of the Fediverse will stay in their isolated bubble with little to no change, while the rest of the network continues to grow or change. It’s not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult. It’s not like the servers have to move to a different neighborhood. Gentrification is predicated on the finiteness of physical space and affordable places to live.

      and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

      This is probably news to you, but there’s not even a coherent, all-encompassing definition for what the Fediverse even is. The idea that there’s a “real Fediverse” vs “Fake Fediverse” glosses over all kinds of history and nuance. The best anyone’s gotten to defining it is by specifying protocols and interoperability, but even that doesn’t quite cover it.

      The Fediverse isn’t just the parts you like, minus the parts you don’t like.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.net
        6·
        7 months ago

        It’s not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult.

        That remains to be seen. There are multiple ways a single huge instance could drive up costs for everyone else, especially when there isn’t organic growth that allows developers to find creative workarounds to firehose problems.

        Lemmy has been seeing federation-desync issues over the last couple of weeks due to a bug in kbin being amplified by Lemmy.world. I imaging a similar issue but with a fully federated Threads would simply ddos most fediverse instances out of existence.