Not willing to give them ideas so fast.

That’s something that popped in my head as soon as I started in here, not so long ago.

But there’s nothing to prevent that, right? I mean, Meta could very well create a meta instance on Lemmy or Kbin or Mastodon or in all of them, bring a bunch of users, sprinkle in some ads because why not.

Sure, they could be defederated from more restrictive insfances. In the bigger picture, every other instance could boycott them, but they would surely federate among themselves (Elon meets Mark, ugh). They also have all the computational power and would have no problem being the largest instances in the Fediverse.

Then what? Is that feasible? Probable? My utopian future about a free, descentralized Fediverse is a lie?

  • Ungoliantsspawn@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    Honestly is not a big deal. Some specific instance might start behaving like aholes because of corporate greed or anything else.

    All they can do is take their specific communities down. The affected communities can always move to other instance (that is easier than changing to a different system all together).

    Changing platforms will always be harder than just switch instance because you instance changed the rules on you.

    • _finger_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      The word “millions of eyes” tends to start attracting corporate overlords. When we hit a million users I think things might start changing.

  • Ertebolle@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    I’m all for corporate instances as long as we get a bunch of them - the one thing we really do need to avoid is a situation where one company dominates the “open” Fediverse to the extent that they can turn around and murder it, like Google did with Usenet.

  • Kevin@l.1in1.net
    0·
    2 years ago

    honestly it would be better than it is now. currently content is in what we call silos or walled gardens. if my grandma posts to Facebook i can’t see it because I’m not with Facebook.

    If Facebook (/ mEtA) went on the Fediverse, that would also mean exposing any and all content over the ActivityPub standard. Every user can decide themselves if they want to see posts from Facebooks servers, but there would at least be the opportunity to see the content at all.

    Also it would make switching away from big platforms way easier, because why would i stay with Facebook, when i can just switch to e.g. tchncs.de or my own server and keep in touch with all my old contacts.

    TL;DR Big cooperations federating their content silos would be good, that’s why (for the most part) it’s not going to happen

  • Xeelee@kbin.social
    0·
    2 years ago

    Corporate instances would be a sign that this thing is gaining traction. Obviously there are downsides, but it would give a lot more credibility to the fediverse and get more people to give it a try. And someone has to pay the hosting costs anyway. Financing will increasingly become an issue as user numbers grow. The point where you can’t just do this as a hobby project any more is going to come sooner rather than later.

    • cojoco@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      The point where you can’t just do this as a hobby project any more is going to come sooner rather than later.

      Will it, though? I thought one of the big points of the fediverse is that you can host your own small instance, federate with other instances, and get the content you care about. It’s certainly not easy enough for most people to do right now, but it seems like ernest and others are working on making it easier.

      • Awwab@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I have been looking at setting up my own kbin instance and the big unknown for me is how much disk space will it use up. I have seen others report in the range of 400-500mb a day. That seems low but it’s only going to increase over time and then it becomes a question of data retention, how long do I want keep content 99% of which I may never look at again.

  • karrbs@kbin.social
    01·
    2 years ago

    I was actually just thinking this when thinking about switching to @pixelfed i was thinking what if Instagram just converted to federated instance. How that would look

  • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
    026·
    2 years ago

    Medium already has an instance, and so does Vivaldi. Tumblr is planning on supporting federation. Although not really a corporate, Mozilla is also setting up its own instance (which is something I am happy about).

    Worst of all, Meta is coming up with an ActivityPub platform. I am going to dread the day when my timeline will be flooded with posts from them.