Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
Océane
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Hi everyone,
In an attempt to get away with as much money as they can, Zuckerberg and friends are cloning Twitter under the Instagram brand, and will make it join ActivityPub. https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-is-working-on-an-instagram-branded-twitter-alternative
This looks like an excellent opportunity to make it lose as much money as possible. Facebook (the product) detects people using it to argue with strangers as vulnerable and has a tendency to flood their notifications and their emails with stuff they don't care about in order to make them develop learned helplessness and eventually fall into depression, leading them to create assets that their peers will consume (and believe), based on other such assets, which is very lucrative for their predators because they will then consume dozens of ads every day, that people will pay for in a classic use value/exchange value extortion [1] (they will pay for ads that won't get them any money, because Zuckerberg's victims can't spend money on all of them).
This last move from Facebook, Inc. is typical of what Galbraith calls a "bezzle" – "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it". Facebook investors think they're gonna get a return on investment, without realizing that Facebook (but also Twitter and Uber) are losing money every second; Twitter was dying, and now Facebook, Inc. is pretending again that it isn't, to get away with more VC money. https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/
I'd like to ask to the Social.Coop community how we, the Fediverse, could make Facebook, Inc. lose as much money as possible. A path among others would be to make a more systematized criticism of VC and this kind of companies part of our culture, but then I don't know how we could get there. I think we really should brainstorm the best way to make Facebook, Inc. lose as much money as possible, preferably before they join the Fediverse.
[1] Marx and Engels, “Capital”, 1867, url: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/index.htm
Océane Mon 20 Mar 2023 7:01AM
@Eduardo Mercovich Hi, sorry I was long to reply. Yeah actually social media lower your chances of succeeding. But I don't know, I want to accelerate their downfall not to give them yet another market.
My main concern was that the "standalone" social media may mean a standalone client as well with its own baked-in server, or even a web client with its own Javascript server, similarly to P2P Element carrying its own Dendrite server, filling the Fediverse with unmanageable junk. But we'd just have to switch to a whitelist model then, instance admins would have to get in touch in other places, manage instances whitelists, etc. So it would be like a damp squib.
Brian Vaughan Mon 19 Jun 2023 3:15AM
I'm not sure if this is the best way to bring this up for discussion, but I would like Social.Coop to consider signing on to the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact. https://fedipact.online/
tanoujin Mon 19 Jun 2023 7:39AM
@Brian Vaughan all for it!
Bob Haugen Mon 19 Jun 2023 10:52AM
@Brian Vaughan I'm good with social.coop signing the anti-meta fedi pact.
Sam Whited Mon 19 Jun 2023 2:05PM
I'd also like to signal my support for this. Maybe a separate thread for discussion (that can later lead to a vote) about this specific thing would be better though? As is this is kind of buried in a larger thread.
Brian Vaughan Mon 19 Jun 2023 5:04PM
@Sam Whited Sure. I wasn't sure what the best practice would be for bringing this up.
Billy Smith Mon 19 Jun 2023 6:32AM
I have a question.
When someone starts a mastodon instance, what sort of compatibility are those instances required to follow to be fully inter-operable with the ActivityPub protocol?
If they can do a full transfer of posts and social connections, then it would be one way of transferring people across to the fully-open Mastodon, and escaping from the FB walled garden. :D
tanoujin Mon 19 Jun 2023 7:48AM
Afaik it is no problem to move around with your content and contacts. But I am here to stay or trash it alltogether. And I would like to see the Zuckerberg Empire excluded from my space. Looking forward to vote on it.
Bjorn Toft Madsen Tue 20 Jun 2023 9:08AM
I personally don't think social.coop should be in the business of trying to inflict losses on somebody else. If Meta plays nicely, we should welcome them to the fediverse. Right now, all we have is speculation and I feel it's a bit weird for us as a community to create missions for hurting others.
Eduardo Mercovich · Wed 15 Mar 2023 2:17PM
Maybe it's not the active position that you invite to, but my position has been for many years to just not use anything from them. People open their eyes when I say "I don't use whatsapp" but I not only survive, but really thrive.
And losing "users" eventually makes them loose money because they loose impact and value.
Just my half cent. :)