I think when you get a bunch of people using a federated Meta platform, and they start to connect with friends using Mastodon or others, this will introduce them to the concept of federation. And then when they talk to their friends and find they can follow all the same people but don’t have to be bombarded with ads all day, they can move to another server.
Actually, I think I just worked out why this could go bad… if you are on Mastodon and follow someone on meta-twitter, Meta can send you ads as posts of the person you’re following… they could advertise to anyone following people on their platform without them needing to even use their platform…
That is potentially very bad yes, but if they try to make it look like someone you are talking to is endorsing a product that could also very quickly end in a lawsuit
How feasible would it be for a small email provider like ProtonMail to block users from sending or receiving email from Gmail?
I think if Meta-twitter encouraged a lot more users into other servers because they could follow who they wanted on Meta-twitter, it would be an issue if you defederated them.
Since to federate you only need to use the ActivityPub protocol, there isn’t a reason new posts would need to be triggered by user action. The platform they are federating with would just see all posts as new posts on the protocol, regardless of whether it’s an ad or a genuine post. I guarantee they are trying to think up a way to do it, and if it’s feasible it will be done.
I think when you get a bunch of people using a federated Meta platform, and they start to connect with friends using Mastodon or others, this will introduce them to the concept of federation. And then when they talk to their friends and find they can follow all the same people but don’t have to be bombarded with ads all day, they can move to another server.
Actually, I think I just worked out why this could go bad… if you are on Mastodon and follow someone on meta-twitter, Meta can send you ads as posts of the person you’re following… they could advertise to anyone following people on their platform without them needing to even use their platform…
That is potentially very bad yes, but if they try to make it look like someone you are talking to is endorsing a product that could also very quickly end in a lawsuit
Yeah I meant more a “Sponsored” tag, so it’s obviously an ad. Then keep changing it up to avoid ad blockers like they do on facebook…
The second they did that the servers that hadden’t defederated from them would probably at the very least rethink their decision not to do so
Also how doable would that be? Considering they don’t control UI of the platform they would be trying to broadcast the ads to
How feasible would it be for a small email provider like ProtonMail to block users from sending or receiving email from Gmail?
I think if Meta-twitter encouraged a lot more users into other servers because they could follow who they wanted on Meta-twitter, it would be an issue if you defederated them.
Since to federate you only need to use the ActivityPub protocol, there isn’t a reason new posts would need to be triggered by user action. The platform they are federating with would just see all posts as new posts on the protocol, regardless of whether it’s an ad or a genuine post. I guarantee they are trying to think up a way to do it, and if it’s feasible it will be done.