Those of you not plugged into the Mastodon community may not be aware of the predominant reaction to Instagram Threads. This started when it was merely rumored, reaching a crescendo with reports that Meta had been talking to a few of the larger Mastodon instances under NDA, presumably to encourage them not to “defederate” with Threads when it came online.1 Let me describe that reaction for you, with only mild exaggeration:
I’m kinda baffled at how little trust people have on the Fediverse. People talk like every single instance is one soft breeze from collapsing and giving into the first Big Tech company to glance their way, and they best that we can hope is to fence it off to ward off the inevitable temptation. If that’s how it is, it doesn’t bode well for the future, regardless of Meta’s presence.
The Fediverse is fragile. Especially Lemmy. Any more of yesterday’s XSS shenanigans (welcome back to 2010!) and Lemmy will get the reputation of impossible to trust. Similar to how Google+ was a “ghosttown” with a few hundred million users, a few million of which were actually active.
The fediverse is not fragile. It’s been around for a decade and a half during which time large corporate networks have taken over the world and then faded away. It’s always been small and likely always will be, but that isn’t a failure when your objective is to have a nice, communal network instead of a corporate, ad network that makes you $$$.