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I think a big part of what is making this process so painful is that social.coop's membership currently includes users with strongly contrasting expectations of what services social.coop should provide. (2/?)

(posting these unlisted, because I'm sure a lot of people are exhausted by the #Facebook #discourse by now)

An important distinction is between users who:

a) See social.coop and the parts of the fediverse that are aligned with our values as a community existing outside of the corporate internet, and who see social.coop as having a responsibility to maintaining the integrity of that community

vs,

b) See social.coop as a communication tool that should be as inclusive or exclusive as the individual user wishes, including the option of communicating with people on the corporate internet.

(3/?)

Up until now, the corporate internet has had no presence to speak of on Activity Pub, and both of sets of users could easily be served with no problems. As the landscape is changing, and we are deciding how to proceed, there is an implicit statement to one or the other of these groups that "We will no longer provide the service you are looking for. Go elsewhere."

That's bound to create some feelings of hurt.

(4/?)

As we make decisions about how to moderate the corporate internet, to federate or not, to limit or not, we are also making choices about what kinds of users social.coop will attract.

(5/?)

If we federate with Threads.net, many of our anti-federation members will leave and we will also become more inviting to future prospective members who want broad reach, including people who love the idea of using the fediverse to keep up with family and acquaintances.

If we defederate, many of our pro-federation people will leave, and we will also become more inviting to future prospective members who are looking for shelter from the storm of the corporate internet.

(6/?)

Whichever decision social.coop makes about #deferation, the future composition of social.coop membership changes.

(7/?)

This is a little harsh to say, but I think it's important:

Because our decision on the Threads.net question is expected to change the composition of our community, it should also be expected to change the results of future decisions that we make as a community.

This is the main reason why I would seriously consider leaving if we decide to handle surveillance capitalist instances the same way that we handle regular instances. Others might have similar feelings in the opposite direction.

(8/?)

The thinking above is a major motivator for the question I raised about whether we could be two instances or communities (https://www.loomio.com/d/m4hc80Tn/could-we-be-two-instances-communities-).

If such a thing were possible, it might be a path forward that would allow us to serve the maximum number of our current members.

(9/?)

I want to acknowledge here that the idea of social.coop providing separate services for pro-federation members might not satisfy all the concerns of our members who are trying to take a principled stand that social.coop should sever any possible ties with Meta / #Facebook.

I suspect some of us would be reluctant to be part of a group endorsing communication with Facebook *at all*, even if we never had to be exposed to it directly.

(10/?)

Users on instances that federate with Threads.net or other large corporate instances will become accustomed to the large number of contacts they will reach on the corporate instance(s), and when federation is withdrawn will no longer be satisfied with their experience here.

But also, instances that choose to federate with Threads.net will be more likely to attract users looking for that kind of experience.

(12/?)

Down the line, when corporate players withdraw #federation from community-bsed instances, unhappy users will leave.

If the corporate players instead say "well, we won't federate anymore, but if you hand over your databases, we'll let you become part of us," users accustomed to that environment will be more likely to support that kind of change.

(13/?)

As I've said before (https://social.coop/@dynamic/110598562520154376), I don't think that a player like #Facebook joining ActivityPub would pose an existential threat to the Fediverse, but I do think that choosing to federate with it could post an existential threat to individual instances.

(14/14)

(edited to correct double-negative)

@dynamic
I agree. I'm not even sure it's an EEE situation anymore since my gut feeling is, if I were a big evil surveillance capitalist corp in the age of LLM and targeted ads, I would want two things: all your user data and the ability to push ads to your users

Beyond that, if you're wiiling to believe my padded user numbers make me too big to block & you want to pay for the infrastructure and moderate it for free... okay!

Just sign this privacy policy and enable these extensions to federate!

@frankiesaxx

I think that would give them the data, but not necessarily a good way to advertise to us?

@dynamic
It really depends on the software and if they require compatibility that would let them push ads as a condition of federation

I'm not talking about the current implementations of platforms we're running now but it's completely feasible that in the future there's a Threads-compatibility fork of Mastodon that comes with embedded Facebook pixel and some custom code for ad injection

(Why would anyone run it? Why to federate with 100 million zombie accounts on Threads, of course! ;)