We will never be able to compete with them for as long as they remain federated with us. We will simply have no unique value any longer. All of our development–open source. All of our content–available to the federation. He will have rightful possession of it all, everything we are.

However, he does not have to share his development with us. He does not have to share his hardware resources with us. He does not have to limit himself to only the capabilities that we want to be added.

He can, if absolutely necessary, buy us. One big Instance at a time.

Our only path forward with any independence is to defederate immediately and ruthlessly. This way, we keep our content. We keep that unique contribution, that we can use as a competitor to eventually demonstrate our value to the rest of the world. That’s the only way possible for us to have any chance of eventually toppling him, instead. We must retain our unique value. We must protect our content. If he wants it, make him scrape it and repost it with bots or something.

Yeah, but I’m still doing it on purpose to help the community grow. Somebody’s gotta fill this place with content, and at the end of the day that’s our job.

Normally I’m more of a commenter exclusively unless I need the services of a specific community. (video game question usually) But the Lemmy project has sent me digging for all the best youtube stuff I’ve seen in basically the past decade and then finding the community to shove it in.