When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse “soon”.
But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta’s saying ActivityPub integration’s “a long way out”. Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!
From the perspective of the “free fediverse” that’s not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is “a long way out” is encouraging. OK, it’s not as good as “when hell freezes over,” but it’s a heckuva lot better than “soon.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say “a long way out” is a clear victory for the free fediverse’s cause.
They did something similar a few years ago.
At one point they opened their messenger system and allowed XMPP clients to connect. This worked absolutely fine, and chatting in any XMPP compatible client was possible.
But it was also possible to OTR encrypt the data so Facebook only got seemingly random character strings that are absolutely useless for data harvesting and profile analysis to sell to advertisers, so they closed down the messenger and disabled the XMPP bridge not long after they opened it.
Same will happen here: As soon as people start interacting in a way it is not possible for the company to track everything, they will stop allowing it.
On a personal note: I will defederate from Meta as soon as they establish their ActivityPub bridge (it of course will only be a bridge, or does anyone really think they would base one of their main features on an open standard?)
I don’t trust them. So this means nothing.
I reminded of the end of season 1 of Foundation, where the Foundation stayed hidden from the empire for a long time, growing in strength and technology.
Season 2 is pretty good so far
Is that series good? I’m not subscribing to Apple TV just for that but I read the first book many years ago and I’m interested on Fundation.
That’s the neat thing, you don’t actually have to subscribe to any of these streaming services in order to watch their shows.
yar har
High seas time
It’s ironic, considering how much we’ve been fighting over whether to let Meta in or not.
Fuck me, that’s exactly how society works, some bully doing something, the normal people fighting over it, then the bully going “never mind lol”.
That’s true, although I’ve been saying all along that Threads’ potential arrival is a great opportunity whether or not it happens.
I think they were ever only going to do it if Threads failed.
I think they may have realised that federating whilst they’re still not allowed to operate in the EU would hand hundreds of millions of EU users to independent instances.
I think it makes entry into the EU easier, but they’re receiving headwinds on two fronts there. There’s no need for them to implement federation if they can’t overcome the other regulatory hurdles first.
Yep. Federation could conceivably respond to the EU’s requirement for interoperability – and they could do it in a way that puts a lot of barriers to people actually moving, so works well for them. Of course the EU would say that didn’t meet the requirement, which would lead to a multi-year legal battle and eventually Meta would probably pay a billion dollar fine (as they routinely do – it’s just a cost of doing business) and promise to remove the barriers (which they wouldn’t, and then there would be another multi-year legal battle).
But none of that works if the EU won’t allow Threads for some other reason!
Still, my guess is that they’ll figure out a way around the EU’s objections to Threads … we shall see …
Imagine of the EU mandated all social networks to be interoperable…
Nah, what would be the point of keeping Threads around then? They’d shut it down as soon as user numbers got too low. Same as what happened with G+
Agree, if Threads majorly flops they’d just pull the plug, add they’ve done before.
I still don’t get their target audience for Threads.
Facebook users don’t want to leave their weird boomer Internet bubble. Instagram users will continue posting pictures on Instagram and advertise their
linktr.eeaccount where they link to their 18+ content because they’re not allowed to link in directly from Instagram, and 𝕏 users … well … they will continue using 𝕏.Ironically the only ones wo really care about Threads is people in the Fediverse.
If someone plans to move to my neighborhood and that one has a record of burning down houses, it’s not a good idea to give it a chance.
It’s almost as if the entire point of Threads was to use the Twitter hate to harvest more personal data with zero interest in creating an actual longstanding platform. 🤔
Threads is pretty blatant about censorship and sharing of user data. They use terms like “a friendly space” and “convenient” to sell it to users. So you’re actually losing something by jumping ship from Twitter. The one positive for Musk era Twitter was an attempt to reduce censorship, but the crazy things the company did otherwise far outweigh it.
One of the shitty things profit driven social media sites do is curate content to create a more advertiser friendly space. It even extends to special interests and government interests. I mean what do you call that when public information is curated by the government. I sure as hell don’t want my US government telling me what I can and can not discuss in a public venue.
In the USA there’s a little thing called the first amendment. Granted these are companies and don’t necessarily have to adhere to civil rights in the same way government agencies do, but in effect they’re doing the same thing. The US government should absolutely not be coercing these US companies into censoring content, which they are.
Reduced censorship, so long as what you’re posting paints musk in a positive light, doesn’t upset him, and so long as it’s mostly racist.
Reduced censorship. Lol. No man, just no.
I don’t consider that a victory at all. Meta could bring the Fediverse to the masses. And allow anyone to follow and interact with their friends on Threads.
Why do we need to bring the fediverse to the masses though?
Threads will only federate if they are required to by law.
Oh boy act surprised
Bummer I honestly can’t wait until we can integrate. Connecting with some who would just never come to the fediverse otherwise
