I do not want my posts from anywhere on the Fediverse on FaceBook.
I have have seen people express worry over FaceBook posts showing up on the Fediverse. But, what about our posts showing up on FaceBook.
If Meta federates with the Fediverse, do my Mastodon posts (e.g.) show up on FaceBook?
I am also not sure how EEE is supposed to work with decentralized platforms. In the end, everyone can say “that it’s all too much for me and I’ll build my own network with like-minded people, just like at the beginning of the fediverse.”
The article linked above describes how Google killed a federated service by EEE. If you are interested how it can work I’d recommend it.
After EEE is done the fediverse would be irrelevant and lack users. But course it doesn’t stop people from making their own servers and federating into small communities. But the vast majority of users would use the meta version which was eventually made incompatible with the fediverse. That made 99% of users go there. And I if you ask someone to join your fediverse groups they’ll wonder why you are not on the meta thing instead.
As I stated in another comment it is not impossible that they may leech the fediverse to death but I think its highly unlikely. The fediverse is much more than just a decentralised platform. It is an amalgamation of many platforms with different userbases and different goals. In order for the fediverse to collapse, everything would have to be replaced together as well as the flexibility to continuously integrate new services, as is the case here now.
In the case of XMPP, the community became a passive spectator of google’s advance and was eventually replaced by it. But as long as the community does not become dependent on the big corpos in any way and regards their contributions more as a nice bonus, something like this will not happen. It is this self-sufficiency that allows the freedom to go one’s own way and to keep the power decentralised in the community. I have to admit, however, that this can be a big challenge, but one that is nevertheless manageable.
I see some merit in Ploum’s argument that the same way the Google monolith slowed down XMPP development, Meta could slow down ActivityPub development or steer it in a certain direction by forcing others to implement their extensions if they want to keep interoperability, before finally dumping it. But yes the “extinguish” situation would then be a return to the current status-quo, Fediverse as a tiny niche of like-minded people doing their own thing.