Meta’s platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have billions of users around the world. Those platforms are also the most popular social media platforms in the world. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated how he has a noble goal to “connect the world”. Now that Twitter has been in its downward spiral for a long time under Elon Musk’s dodgy leadership, for Meta it may feel natural to fill the void by creating Threads. Threads is also going to implement ActivityPub federation and enter the Fediverse, what could possibly go wrong? Right? Right???

Meta has had a famously dodgy reputation regarding user privacy, employee conditions, lousy content moderation, platforms being used for hateful purposes and the list goes on and on. Every now and then Meta has to go into court because of abusing various privacy laws or its monopolistic position. Few years ago there were lots of talk about whether Meta along with other Big Tech companies should be broken up. Meta can’t escape controversy. Every now and then more dirt is revealed about the company. Zuckerberg’s presence that is 50% of an android created by Noonian Soong and 50% a reptilian doesn’t really help either.

By entering the Fediverse with Threads Meta is attempting to create a fragile illusion of a company that will embrace open protocols and play nice. Based on what is written before, it isn’t going to play nice and that fragile illusion is created only to appease the EU. Meta had allegedly reached several Mastodon instance admins and try to get them sign NDAs. That is already dodgy if true. Meta as a multi-billion dollar company is looking for profits at any cost, while the Fediverse is looking for freedom from such. Many people might be also familiar with the EEE (embrace-extend-extinguish) strategy that many Big Tech companies like Meta have used to ensure their market dominance.

There are several other concerns. Threads’ userbase will likely clash with Fediverse’s ethos, creating another Eternal September. Existing moderation tools wouldn’t likely keep up with that, and so wouldn’t server hardware. In the last few months I have been vigilant with rescaling hardware and monitoring whether this instance will endure the increased userbase. I can’t imagine how much of a bigger issue it would be with Meta’s larger userbase. Yes, there would be whole a lot more active users and reach, but at what cost?

Based on what I have said above, I will say no to federating with Threads. My morals won’t allow that, and to do otherwise would also feel like betraying Sopuli’s userbase.

Henkka Laukka made a good blog post about Threads (in Finnish, translate with the tool of your choice) and I’d like to end my message with a quote from it:

Why would we allow one questionably large company to join a network whose main attraction and sort of unwritten slogan is: “your data is your data”? The rules of the game should be the same. Whether it’s Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s new Bluesky service or Meta’s Threads, the incentive for both is to make as much of their users’ accounts as possible, by any means necessary. You could compare the situation to your favourite restaurant moving into the same building as another restaurant chain that flirts with human trafficking, luring customers with cheap prices, making them cook their own food and pocketing the money, including the tax avoided, for their own use. Of course, there is nothing illegal about Meta’s actions, as in this example, but morally it is highly questionable.