Meta federating would be the best thing to ever happen to the Fediverse. Face it, Fediverse is not by its own in a billion years going to somehow kill off Meta. The vast, vast majority of users are going to stay with traditional social media, there’s nothing we can do about that.
However, Meta et al actually joining the Fediverse means we won. The vast majority will still stay with Meta’s services, but no one here has to. This is the closest we will ever get to a truly open standard for social media.
I don’t want to have an account with Meta or Twitter or whatever, but I, like most people, want to be able to communicate with the people who do.
As I see it, there are only two ways forward for the Fediverse:
Traditional SoMe stays closed and inaccessible for anyone who doesn’t want to sell their soul to Meta. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe and the Fediverse stays a minuscule hobby project at best. Even here, most people will probably also have accounts on the traditional platforms in order to not cut oneself off from the world.
Traditional SoMe embraces open standards and anyone who cares can choose to use whatever service they want. The vast majority of people still use traditional SoMe, but the Fediverse now has access to billions of people (or not, you can choose yourself) without having to become a commodity that Meta can sell to advertisers.
Ideally, instead of having to register a Meta account, I can just stay with Kbin.social without losing access to the content.
I feel that this has been a bit of an eye opening moment. It's nice to see that we at least don't have to worry about the risk of importing a toxic community, because evidently we are fully capable of producing that ourselves.
I had no doubt that that this is a controversial topic, but the fact that we as a community aren't even capable of having a civil discussion about it actually saddens me a bit (I'm not just referring to the comment I'm replying to).
Not that it was ever going to be any different, but it's very funny how a userbase that so clearly sees itself as so much smarter and more mature than the average rando is obviously using the downvote as a "I disagree" button on your comment here.
I can see thinking that this is a naïve perspective, and I'd probably agree with that really, but you clearly have a position, have thought about it, and tried to explain it. This isn't what downvotes are supposed to be for.
It's almost as if people here are just as emotionally driven as the normies they detest so much.
Frequent assumption: I am smart and logical, so everything I think is driven by logic.
Frequent corollary: If I ever admit to being driven by emotion, I look stupid.
Maybe in some circles, but I think it’s better to be self-aware and to try to fix the holes in your own thinking. If you can’t see when you’re being influenced by emotion when you might not want to be, you can make a lot more illogical decisions and take your life down a path you don’t want. Doesn’t seem very smart to me. But people of all levels of intelligence fall victim to pride, so this happens anyways.
As you enter more online spaces you start getting a feel for what different communities put in their rules and notice it’s usually the same. Don’t be a dick. Don’t spam. Don’t post illegal stuff here. No (or limited) self-promotion, we’ll consider it spam. And you stop reading the rules. Maybe this is why so many people use the downvote to express disagreement?