The new text-based social network from Meta may demolish Twitter and also target the fediverse.
The P92 social media network could be compatible with ActivityPub, the platform on which services like Mastodon are developed. Users will be able to sign in with their existing Instagram credentials, making it trivially simple to join Mastodon instances around the world. It’s a bold step by Meta, but it could be just as risky for decentralized social media as it is for Twitter.
“Facebook’s inability to provide its users with autonomy is its sole deficiency. Social media applications such as Mastodon are not operated by a parent business. It operates on separate servers, and users are free to establish their own code of conduct “Email from marketing specialist Ryan Faber to Lifewire.
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The P92 Avoids the Fediverse
Twitter is on the decline. After Musk’s takeover, trolls and bad actors have finally succeeded in destroying Twitter for the rest of us. Many users have migrated to Mastodon, a decentralized network of several federated servers that anybody can join. In its most basic form, it resembles email in that you choose your email provider, but can communicate with anyone on any other email service.
This differs fundamentally from services such as Twitter and Facebook. They are monolithic structures in which all activity occurs within a walled garden. The benefit of this method is that you can sign up without vetting and selecting a server “instance.” The negative is that anyone with sufficient funds can purchase the entire collection, or a single corporation might mine horrifying quantities of personal information from billions of individuals.
At the same time, federal scrutiny of Meta’s methods is intensifying. By embracing the federated approach, it may be able to escape the feared regulation. If P92, or whatever it ends up being called, is simply another ActivityPub-compatible service, or even just an Instagram-branded Mastodon server, the case for splitting it out is weakened.
It sounds incredible, like a real victory for open, decentralized social media and micro-publishing, represented by the fediverse, a collection of servers and protocols. And it removes the greatest impediments for Facebook and Instagram users to enter the fediverse. Instead of attempting to comprehend the entire federated system, you may join from Instagram or whatever new app Meta develops. Nevertheless, this is also the greatest threat to the existing fediverse.
The Decentralized Social Media of Meta
Microsoft employed a strategy known as “embrace, extend, and eliminate” in the 1990s (or “exterminate”). It was how it conquered the nascent browser business, for instance. In the case of Meta and the fediverse, this is how it would function.
Meta would adopt Mastodon and immediately become the largest Mastodon server in the world. It may then add functionality, and it would ensure that anyone using its own instance would be subject to the same stringent surveillance as those using Meta’s other products.
Then, if everything goes according to plan, Meta may use its dominance to suffocate the rest of the fediverse. Any independent Mastodon servers unwilling or unable to integrate Meta’s proprietary features would be excluded.
“Facebook is not coming to Fedi because they want to administer a decent, responsible instance that views other well-run instances as peers and has policies that aim to respect the autonomy and values of its users and the users of other instances, correct?” On Mastodon, the Research Fairy, the creator and administrator of the scholar. social Mastodon instance, made the following statement.
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The Best Defense
Nevertheless, it may not be so simple. While an easy sign-up will likely be sufficient to convince the remaining Twitter users to switch to Mastodon through Facebook, the fediverse has a few other tricks on its sleeve. A Mastodon instance can initially block any other instance. This can be used to disconnect malicious or trolling servers, but it might also be used to disable Meta’s P92 network. Currently, I’d assume that the majority of Mastodon users are anti-Meta (or anti-Facebook) and prefer a server that prevents it.
Even a heavily-blocked Mastodon instance owned by Meta could be sufficient to kill Twitter. And who knows, it could even wind up bringing more people to Mastodon and other decentralized social media and federated goodies.
