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Erin Kissane

Do the people stating that Meta can’t possibly “monetize” posts originating from other fedi services not believe that Threads users are going to experience, for example, Mastodon posts as *part of their Threads timeline*…which is algorithmically populated and will get monetized as soon as Meta flips ads on?

Is there any documented reason not to believe that this is not the most likely outcome?

9 comments
Chris White

@kissane yeah this should not be confusing. The Fediverse isn't GPLv3 or something. It's not virally de-monetizing Meta.

Erin Kissane

@stoneymonster It feels like people think Meta makes their money by…selling scraped profile data wholesale or something? Maybe from inside a trench coat down at the Burger King?

Robert W. Gehl

@kissane This is a likely scenario in my view. What is being sold is attention. To direct our attention, corporate social media use our own posts to keep us engaged, and then present marketing messages around (and in) them.

So at the very least, fedi content flowing into Threads is just more interesting stuff for them to keep people's eyes on the platform.

L. Rhodes

@kissane I think a lot of it stems from people just not really understanding how platforms monetize social media. It's not the most transparent system, after all. But it's a pretty big leap to suppose that, since fediverse posts were made on non-commercial services, they CAN'T be monetized. And from my perspective, the very fact that Meta is attempting to federate suggests that they already see a way to profit off of the additional traffic.

Erin Kissane

@lrhodes Honestly, even though the book is good, I think the phrase “surveillance capitalism” has made people think this stuff is so much more complicated than it is. The targeting mechanisms are increasingly fine-grained, but the profit mechanism is *still just ads*! It’s not especially sophisticated.

Anne at Millrace

@lrhodes @kissane Meta etc monetise *behaviour* see Shoshana Zuboff "The Age of Surveillance Capital"

Melocotón Suave

@kissane
Most of the people I’ve seen making these assertions are basing them off what seems to be technical limits in primary linkages to ActivityPub which I don’t doubt developers are trying to make real and useful security goals. What they never seem to address are external secondary linkages like you (& many others like myself see) that may be used to steal data and void privacy & security.
They are technically correct but functionally mistaken.

Jenniferplusplus

@kissane I can't even get people to give coherent descriptions of what an ad is or isn't. I think every claim at this point is just reflexive defensiveness, on every side.

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