cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7477620
Transitive defederation – defederating from instances that federate with Threads as well as defederating from Threads – isn’t likely to be an all-or-nothing thing in the free fediverses. Tradeoffs are different for different people and instances. This is one of the strengths of the fediverse, so however much transitive defederation there winds up being, I see it as overall as a positive thing – although also messy and complicated.
The recommendation here is for instances to consider #TransitiveDefederation: discuss, and decide what to do. I’ve also got some thoughts on how to have the discussion – and the strategic aspects.
(Part 7 of Strategies for the free fediverses )
It’s word games being used to point to something real. A longer way of saying “let’s not solve a non-existent problem” is “There is uncertainty in our understanding and predictions, so we should not treat predicted future problems the same as current observed problems”.
Using the phrase “non-existent problem” just points to this wisdom by reminding the person that the future is not a real thing but rather a mental image, ie it doesn’t exist yet, and may never exist the way we predict it.
It’s similar to “cross that bridge when we come to it” referring to not focusing efforts on future problems when there are plenty of present problems to solve.
Nothing about the nature of Meta and their track record is imagined. Risk management is the concept you’re missing here, where a bit more of that earlier in the story of how big tech monopolised the internet and our lives on it would have gone a long way. Now where trying to pick up the pieces and a whole generation doesn’t even understand the problem.
The current substack situation is similar where a bunch of people got tricked into getting trapped in a monopolised platform by being convinced they could leave anytime all while the value of network effects was being used to build walls around them without anyone remembering that platform lock in is almost always bad. Plenty of people could have done something about it just to keep substack honest. But here we are again.