I only partly live under a rock, so I’ve now heard that the Facebooks is making Threads, and it’ll talk to Mastodon.

Any idea how to keep them from taking over? Apparently, you’re a weirdo these days if you use Firefox, Brave/Qwant, and trust FLOSS > proprietary.

  • jaderoEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Edit: this comment changed my mind. In a nutshell, if we can’t keep a large instance controlled by “the enemy” from destroying what we’ve got, then we just have to do better next time.

    Threads or whatever Meta might introduce is just a specific example of the problem with a controlling instance.

    Bitcoin has to take steps to avoid a 51% attack lest the whole thing come crashing down.

    Condo buyers have to make sure they are not buying into something where the developer keeps over half of the units as rentals in order to control the board.

    I think the fediverse has to also guard against any one instance hosting too large a fraction of users. I’m not sure that it even takes being as big as half the users. I’m not sure what a critical mass would be, but I’m sure that a large enough instance could “go critical.”