• prole@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    I think we’re more likely to see users move from Threads to Mastodon than the other direction.

    I keep seeing people say things like this, but it’s just naive. Meta isn’t spending billions of dollars just to give their captive audience an offramp.

    • Zak@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m not sure what Meta’s goal is with adding federation to Threads. Some options include:

      • Preempting government scrutiny for monopolistic practices
      • Gaining a competitive advantage against Xitter/Bluesky/etc…
      • Giving Threads users access to more people/content

      As for why I think the flow of users is likely to be away from Threads:

      • People who already actively use Mastodon and the like tend to be fairly technically sophisticated and anti-corporate. Not many of those will switch to a Meta product when they can reach the same audience without it.
      • Most people who joined Threads got there via Instagram. Those sorts of mainstream users mostly haven’t been exposed to decentralized, non-corporate social media. The added exposure of seeing it from Threads is more marketing than these open source projects could ever hope to buy.