Unfortunately, Mastodon's lack of features makes it hard for normies to use and it will not see mainstream adoption. I hope normies get a decent Twitter replacement.

Well that's because Mastodon has many shortcomings. Like the search sucks. It's hard to find people to follow without asking people for recommendations. Mastodon is scarcely a Twitter replacement; it feels like it was built to create extremely insular communities. Like Gab and Truth Social run on Mastodon's software.

I fail to see how that would generally impact people who interact from the fediverse side of it rather than Meta's own instance. Like if Meta decides to no longer federate with the rest of the fediverse, that would be like all the normies signing up for Threads.net and not interacting with Mastodon at all right?

I think you are reaching.

1. As if Lemmy currently isn't overrun with low effort memes? Have you seen all those cans of beans running amok here?
2. I imagine there are many parties already scraping content from the fediverse as we speak - that's the nature of public web content.

People have a tendency to flock to centralized services. Even on here the majority of activity takes place on Lemmy.world, the fediverse already has a potential centralization problem.

With your point on YouTube, a fediverse version of YouTube that has a similar level and amount of content is impossible due to hosting costs. I have yet to see anyone willing to subsidize a fediverse version of YouTube.

And what's wrong with people making that choice? I know some of the "mainstream" people on Mastodon right now left because of Twitter's craziness but would probably be open to having an account on Threads or Blue Sky. Why the paranoia about people making choices that are best for them? TBH Mastadon search sucks and finding accounts to follow is hard.

Why would their existing communities and friends leave for threads.net if they are on Mastodon to begin with? Most fediverse users I find seem to be pretty passionate about the platform, I doubt they will leave just because their friends are on Threads.

Exactly. Which is why I believe that all this fearmongering is because of Meta's reputation (rightfully so) rather than because Meta actually has a plan to destroy the fediverse. And it's not the like the fediverse can be actually destroyed, people can always start new instances at any time.

I think that article is mostly fearmongering.

Most people using Mastodon right now are not following mainstream people on their feeds - they are mostly following like-minded people who have made the switch from Twitter. If their server decides to federate with Meta, it will actually improve their experience because they can start following mainstream people from the comfort of their Mastodon feed. And if Meta decides to break ActivityPub (which I doubt), it will be back to the original status quo for most users.

And most mainstream people will not be signing up for Mastodon anyways, they will be signing up for Threads/Blue Sky.

I mean wouldn't that be not a bad thing? The people who don't want to federate will be left in their own community with their posts/content intact.

I don't think so. How would they kill the fediverse? Like there will still many communities that will not federate with Meta and still continue to operate as usual.

Ever heard of Mastodon blocklists? I mean defederation has been happening for a while.

But I think that's fine. Instances should have every right to block instances that they disagree with.

You can already donate to the people operating this instance. No subscriptions needed, just donate away.

Just because something's not corporate owned doesn't mean bad actors can come onto this platform. I've seen some unsavory people here already.

That's because Mastodon is a federated Twitter clone. If you never used Twitter to begin with (which is really for professionals/celebrities/famous people to put out public messages to people), then you won't get it. Most people don't need to use Twitter or anything like it.

I mean, how is a bot not already crawling through public sites like Lemmy and Mastodon for the purposes of AI training? Federated or unfederated, if you are providing social media services that data you have is already out there.

There's peer pressure going on right now encouraging Mastodon instance owners not to federate with Meta's Threads. How is that not gatekeeping?

Let instance owners make that choice for themselves. I don't like how people are adopting peer pressure to prevent instance owners from doing what they want with their instances. If instance owners want to federate with Meta, let them do so. It's important to educate people on the pros and cons of federating with Meta instead of pressuring them not to federate with Meta at all.

But that choice should be up to instance owners and people shouldn't pressure them either way. It's their instance, after all, not yours.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that there's a lot of gatekeeping and shaming going on, especially against the Mastodon owners who are thinking about federating with Meta's instance.

Federating with Meta's servers should be a choice. If people want the ability to interact with celebrities and normies, that would be a huge boost to ActivityPub and Mastodon in general, especially for the servers that do end up federating with Meta. Their users would be able to interact and follow all of the mainstream people who are not on Mastodon.

It should be always be a choice. And for those servers that don't federate, things will remain the same. Don't try to gatekeep or spread FUD, it just makes you look paranoid and insular.