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> If Meta can't own a segment they're going to make darn sure that no one else can own it and use their profits from it to push Meta out of their core.

I think it's more about trying to keep your competitors busy defending their moat - so that they don't go on the offense and attack your moat.

Yeah, that also works as an explanation. Same principle—defend yourself by going on the offensive.

There's a reason why Threads was only conceptualized after Musk acquired Twitter and started talking about building an everything app. Pre-Musk Twitter was very content with its market and so wasn't a threat to anyone else. Musk's X was a different story (if he could execute on it, which at the time seemed more likely than it does now).

I may be wrong but I remember it almost exactly the opposite i.e. that Musk was clearly flailing with Twitter and Meta saw that as an opportunity to move into Twitter's market, which they would have struggled to do with competent management at Twitter.

Exactly.

I don't think Meta would have been so keen to launch a competitor if people weren't so desperate to leave x (nee twitter) for another platform.

Yea, lol, Musk's twitter was never, ever a clear threat to any competitor and Zuck smelled blood in the water. Elon fanboism has spun it the other way for obvious reasons.

I'll also note that Twitter was pretty open and had lots of goodwill, which would have made competing against it really hard.

Twitter getting rid of 3rd party clients (pre-Musk), and shutting down API access (post-Musk) burned a lot of goodwill, leading to large spikes of growth of the Fediverse, and creating a window of opportunity for a microblogging service from Meta.

“Commoditize your complements” is a related point.

Content is the input to the Meta ad engine. You can generate it on-platform, or you can bring it in from elsewhere if it is commoditized. (And commoditizing your complements often looks like breaking down your competitors’ moats.)

I don’t think it’s as cynical as a “salt the earth” strategy though, surely they (plan to) make profit from Threads and LLaMa regardless of what their competitors do? Threads users will drive ad revenue, Llama (theoretically, eventually) increases the quality bar for content, driving their main flywheel.

If Mark went scorched earth on AI, you can bet it is not for the sake of generosity.

He’s already forced to by regulators[1]. That’s the reason he did this. No love involved, rest assured.

[1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en

I don't see "Threads" on the list of "Core platform services", and I see no evidence of the services that are so designated becoming part of the fediverse.

Meta is a gatekeeper, it applies to their services. This (or an alternative) will have to be rolled out to Instagram. I guess now the smaller Threads is testing ground.

> Meta's newfound love for product openness has only really manifested in Llama and Threads

They’re also paying lip service to openness by spinning off their VR OS. Of course that doesn’t mean it’ll become any less proprietary, only available on more hardware.

It’s smart to join up with others when you’re the underdog. I think that’s all they’re doing.

Well, personally I think that Meta is taking the threat of regulator action very seriously. You only have to look at how Google and Apple are in trouble.

Owning WhatsApp, Threads and Instagram makes them a big target for breakup. And an open system defuses that significantly.

> And an open system defuses that significantly.

I'm not sure that it has as much of an impact as you think it does. Threads would not be a significant target for regulator action regardless of openness—it doesn't have enough share of the market to be interesting. Meanwhile, the openness of Threads does nothing to alleviate the concerns of their dominance in every non-microblogging social media category.

Meta could link Threads and Instagram in a heartbeat if they chose, and were't scared of the consequences. Threads is small fry at the moment, but a very good test and precursor to making the same play across the other properties. I respect your opinion BTW, I don't like flame wars. :-)

It's worth remembering that the Fediverse is not just microblogging, there are platforms for pretty much every kind of social media play.

> Threads would not be a significant target for regulator action regardless of openness—it doesn't have enough share of the market to be interesting

Zuckerberg thinks Threads could be Meta's next billion-plus-user product.

You are not wrong, but I also think there is another part at play here: Facebook started out quite open and then gradually became closed (just like reddit and twitter).

This is a new product, so they start out open and then slowly close down as they acquire marketshare.

They have been doing a lot of open source work in the frontend world for a while. Biggest example is React.

Yes, there's a reason I specified "product openness". React isn't a product and never could have been, so while I'm grateful to them for releasing it open source it doesn't really represent the same kind of play as Threads or Llama.

How is Llama a product? It's more like React, PyTorch, GraphQL, etc.

Meta’s AI offerings are products. They’re featured in Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

They’re part of the Rayban partnership. Imho definitely a product.

Yes and Facebook uses React and GraphQL. Meta AI uses PyTorch. Does that make them all products?

No, because they’re not exposed to users as features that they interact with. From a user perspective, they don’t ever see if it was made using those tools. They see the AI front and center.

I feel like thats a pretty strong distinction.

They see AI features front and center. They dont see the backend (which may or may not be running Llama). Same goes for React although, with React, the framework is what the end user directly interacts with. So, by that logic, React is more of a product than Llama.

Let me flip this around.

If you are a user, what feature is react giving you? Pre and post react, Facebook is largely the same to a user.

Pre and post graphql, Facebook is also the same.

To the user, neither of those are expressed as features.

Llama / Meta AI is a feature that changes how a user interacts with the system. When it was added, it’s noticeable. If it were to be taken away it would be noticeable. Nobody was boycotting react.

That is the difference between an implementation detail and a product/feature.

I'm not sure I understand this analogy. If Meta changes what underlying model they use, it'll still be called Meta AI. Having the criteria be "what new features does it offer to the users of the site" means that things like databases, servers, etc. are not products. This is objectively false.