@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.
@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.