Great to see #threads doesn't have any improvement in spam / bots prevention.
Posted my first thread and got zero engagement so, I probably won't be using that app unless the cage fight is streamed on it 😂😂
@crazyuncleharris It's similar to Twitter, which is why it's become popular, but it suffers from a similar flaw. There's no Firehose. Unless you have a lot of followers, you're not going to get much engagement. #Threads #Twitter
@Coctaanatis @crazyuncleharris Down the road, however, let's see what fediverse integration does. Maybe Threads is their attempt to insert themselves and cut off Mastodon and such? That's what Meta does, after all.
@MrEntity @Coctaanatis true, I hate to say it, but any company that could truly attempt to become the center of the fediverse it would be #meta
@crazyuncleharris @MrEntity At 70+ million users, already, it dwarfs the fediverse. But for a non-Threads fediverse user it would theoretically give you the ability to follow people on Threads without the data mining and advertising .
@Coctaanatis @MrEntity true but I'd suspect meta would try and scrape as much information as possible through the fediverse as possible, the lack of advertising would be nice, but it wouldn't surprise me if they found a way to push ads through anyways
@Coctaanatis @MrEntity
I know next to nothing about ActivityPub so I'll have to research it to see if my thoughts were even possible
@Coctaanatis @crazyuncleharris Won't Threads be far and away the most used platform with fediverse access? Inserting ads into it in a few months, maybe gradually, would be classic Meta, and its users wouldn't be inclined to switch.
@MrEntity @crazyuncleharris How would they push ads onto non-Meta servers?
@Coctaanatis @crazyuncleharris My point is that they wouldn't need to, having the most populated platform and acting as the gateway to the rest
@MrEntity @crazyuncleharris They'd be the gateway for Threads users, but if you're using another instance you're typically looking for specific users or searching for posts using hashtags. Neither really facilitates advertising.
I think the threat is something similar to what happened when AOL made the Internet available to their subscribers -- bad Twitter-like user behavior spilling over into the Fediverse. The potential for a Fediverse version of Eternal September is real.
@Coctaanatis @MrEntity
I still haven't had time to research the protocol but my two immediate thoughts are:
1) meta would use and abuse the DM functionality to send ads
2) meta would hijack threaders accounts you follow off threads and insert textual based ads onto your various timelines using those accounts. (I'm thinking along the lines of heavy protocol / data manipulation with this one, but again I'm not sure how possible that is without having done my due diligence)
@crazyuncleharris @MrEntity Fediverse servers don't transmit much between each other over ActivityPub. You can't scrape what they don't have. And I don't see how Meta would push ads onto fediverse servers, nor what incentive they'd have to do so. The fediverse is too small.
Anyway, we'll no doubt find out soon enough.