One of the biggest problems with Facebook has been it’s monopolistic control over social media.
People can’t migrate away from it because of the effective monopoly. I’ve tried to move social platforms dozens of times and the thing that makes me come back is the fact that there are certain people that are on Facebook that refuse to migrate. They are happy with the status quo over there. And the only way for me to communicate with them is for me to maintain my Facebook account.
Federation allows me to move off of Facebook and still keep in contact with those who refuse to move off of Facebook. I’ve always wanted Facebook to support federation for this big reason.
All of this translates to threads, there are some people who just aren’t nerds, people who aren’t like us and aren’t willing to deal with the growing pains of something like lemme or mastodon or other federated platforms.
There really is no benefit to de-federating with them that outweighs that as far as I can tell.
If there’s one thing that the Fediverse has the capability of doing it is introducing real competition into the social media space though,
By defederating and cutting off users of that meta platform from the rest of the Fediverse you are strengthening metas monopoly though. You’re making it more difficult for people to leave that platform.
People choose a social platform based on the people they can communicate with. I still have to maintain a Facebook account because there are people on that platform that I need to stay in contact with. I don’t want to have a Facebook account but I have to because it’s the only way to keep in contact with them.
If Facebook federated and I could communicate with those people who decide that they want to stay on Facebook I could then get rid of my Facebook account. I could take advantage of the biggest benefit of the Fediverse and enjoy my social media experience on whichever instance I want without cutting myself off from people who’ve chosen to be on a different social media instance of some kind.
Federating with meta platforms will Make it easier for people to leave meta platforms. Anymore most people are only on Facebook because it is a monopoly and you have to be there in order to talk with everyone that’s there. Giving people an option to talk to people on Facebook without having to be on Facebook yourself makes it easier for people to leave Facebook.