- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I’m not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.
It’s going to be an arms race to make sure free software provides a better service than Threads does, and that people know about it. We can’t be satisfied with unpolished diy software for nerds any more.
This might be a very pessimistic take, but I strongly feel like any average Joe will rather pick the Meta/big corp alternative to the FOSS one. The fact that Meta’s got a reputation for Facebook and Instagram while Mastodon’s got a reputation for being confusing is… very not promising. Basically I feel like this is a lost race already. Hope it’s just me.
Lol Meta has a reputation for stealing data, denying genocide, platforming bigots, and interfering in elections. The idea that the name Facebook wasn’t so toxic that one of the largest tech companies did a massive rebranding in the wake of major scandal (see threatening democracy) is a fantasy.
And that’s precisely why the worry, because there is no chance in hell that fediverse can provide a better, stable and more feature-filled service than an established multibillion corporation like meta.
I think the only problem here is that Eugene has shown absolutely no interest in developing that way. I think that’s what feels so silly about this whole post, he’s forgetting that the ways in which Mastodon are opinionated are not popular even among Mastodon essentialists.