[bickeringyokel]

Could meta inject ads into the fediverse?

That would surely get them banned in a lot more instances, but I guess it would technically be possible for them to make 1 in 10 of your posts an ad.

[not2b]

For Instagram, an ad is essentially a post from someone you don't follow. It seems you're suggesting that they'd make an advertisement and pretend that some friend of yours posted it. They never do anything like that on Instagram and I doubt if they would try it, it could be a huge legal risk making it appear that some person with a big following is endorsing a product when they haven't.

[bickeringyokel]

That's the possibility I'm wondering about. I wasn't really imagining they would pretend it was posted by someone you're following but surround it with some Sponsored content message that made it clear they injected it into the feed of the person you are following.

It sure seems like a terrible idea to me, I'm just trying imagine how exactly they could make it go from an interesting idea of federating, to something that is terrible as meta is one to do.

I think probably the real reason they are federating is to avoid anti-trust issues.

[not2b]

An ad would have to be a post to get into the metaverse, and for it to be pulled in someone would have to be following the account that posted it.