Threads Plans to Interoperate With Other Platforms in the Fediverse (theverge.com) 30
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Verge:
On Friday, two days after Threads finally started publicly testing ActivityPub integration, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared a thread on Threads detailing the company's plans for its continued integration with the fediverse. Right now, it's possible to follow a few Threads accounts (including Mosseri's) from other platforms, but Meta has much bigger plans for Threads interoperability that Mosseri says will take "the better part of a year" to realize...
Mosseri says that the Threads team wants to make it so the option to follow a Threads account on other platforms is available to "all public accounts on Threads, not just a handful of testers." The Threads team wants to let replies from other platforms show up inside of Threads.
According to the article, Threads is also planning to support the ability to follow non-Threads fediverse accounts — and even taking that openness in the other direction.
"Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app / server," Mosseri writes.
Flipboard and Wordpress already allow ActivityPub integration, according to NBC News. They estimate there's 11 million users of the Fediverse now, "the vast majority of them on Mastodon."
Mosseri says that the Threads team wants to make it so the option to follow a Threads account on other platforms is available to "all public accounts on Threads, not just a handful of testers." The Threads team wants to let replies from other platforms show up inside of Threads.
According to the article, Threads is also planning to support the ability to follow non-Threads fediverse accounts — and even taking that openness in the other direction.
"Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app / server," Mosseri writes.
Flipboard and Wordpress already allow ActivityPub integration, according to NBC News. They estimate there's 11 million users of the Fediverse now, "the vast majority of them on Mastodon."
Smart Move (Score:1)
This is a smart move by Meta since they'll basically be combining with the Mastadon folks to pull people fleeing Twitx
Glad to see open protocols being supported!
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I quit Facebook's universe about a decade ago, and won't go back myself. But, over that decade, it's become quite clear most people couldn't care less about their own privacy - I haven't even convinced most of my friends or family to leave.
And, while Twitter ("X" - what a stupid name) has been devolving into a cesspool for some time, the thing that has kept me from fleeing that platform completely is that several of the accounts I follow have no presence on Mastodon. They are pretty much all on Threads, tho
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Meh (Score:2)
Even though Threads is now available in most of the EU, it still requires an Instagram account and I've tried that twice and both times the profiles there were hijacked, with their customer support not doing shit.
If that's anything to go by, Threads is dead on arrival to me before a single login.
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The whole point of this article is - you wouldn't have to join Threads to interact with people / corporations on the platform. So, no Instagram account needed - just use your Mastodon account.
Zuck's basically aiming to kill off Musk.
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Zuck's basically aiming to kill off Musk.
Musk doesn't need any help. When you blatantly lie [reuters.com] that your site is "free speech" then censor people [imgur.com] for that free speech, clearly you aren't being honest. Which is why he's doing fine by himself [theguardian.com] to kill off Twitter
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Zuck's basically aiming to kill off Musk.
"Two men enter, one man leaves!"
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That is not the goal. (Score:1)
Zuck's basically aiming to kill off Musk.
Let's be real here, the aim is to get as many users, and thus as many AI scraping data sets, as possible into the realm of Meta.
Maybe he has as a distant secondary goal harming Twitter but they would be doing things differently if that were in any way a goal they cared about.
The combination of Threads+Mastodon is in no way a threat to Twitter, just like the existence of gay bars is not going to eliminate straight bars.
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and I've tried that twice and both times the profiles there were hijacked
2 billion Instagram users on the planet don't have this problem. If it's happened to you twice, consider what horrendous security practices you employ that allows someone else to hijack your Instagram account.
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Altruism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Meta is not doing this out of the goodness of its heart. [mastodon.social]. They also want more surveillance capitalism.
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I suppose I should look closely at any changes to ToS/ Ts-&-Cs on my Mastodon account. Maybe some time next week - it'll take a time for the programmers to see (and decide how much/ whether to block) Zuck's attempted raping of the metadata. Yeah, next week or the week after. That's attention e
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That's illegal under GDPR and I will send them a complaint later today. If they don't relent, it's on to the regulator.
They can't collect my personal data without consent.
Feature Drops (Score:2)
Originally I was kinda baffled why Meta would ship Threads as a half-finished product with a bunch of missing features despite having the cash and talent to wait until it was finished.
Now I think I see the wisdom of the strategy. For the folks who actually hung around on Threads past the initial bump they're seeing steady stream of non-trivial feature role outs, just watching that process is probably fun in itself. And every time a new feature launches they generate a bit of press coverage. I can't find any
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It seems obvious Musk also strongly influenced the timing of Threads' launch. When he took over Twitter, he became the center of the conversation - which is exactly what he wanted, but in truth was a really stupid business move. Then he proceeded to repeatedly shoot himself in the foot. It was a perfect chance for an well-funded alternative to say "hey, come take a look - we're a Musk-free zone!"
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Originally I was kinda baffled why Meta would ship Threads as a half-finished product
I'm sorry what? I thought a blind man could see that Meta rushed it out to coincide with a massive scandalous downturn and exodus of marketing companies from Twitter.
There's nothing baffling about it, in fact it would be baffling if they *didn't* push out a half finished product at the time.
But then you're also forgetting the times we live in. half-finished is a 2001 term. These days it's called "minimum viable product", the IT equivalent of "we'll fix it in post" or "we'll patch it after release". It's the
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Originally I was kinda baffled why Meta would ship Threads as a half-finished product
I'm sorry what? I thought a blind man could see that Meta rushed it out to coincide with a massive scandalous downturn and exodus of marketing companies from Twitter.
Somewhat, but it's a lot tougher fixing stuff in production. They could have delayed a few months and added a lot more features, like it didn't even have a web interface to start with.
There's nothing baffling about it, in fact it would be baffling if they *didn't* push out a half finished product at the time.
But then you're also forgetting the times we live in. half-finished is a 2001 term. These days it's called "minimum viable product", the IT equivalent of "we'll fix it in post" or "we'll patch it after release". It's the normal way of delivering software in the 2020s.
Well the big difference now vs 2001 is updates are a lot easier (especially for cloud products), I also think software is much more stable than it was in 2001, and I haven't heard of any major Threads bugs so they've had some time to polish from that perspective.
Occam's razor says they released it half-finished because they we
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Oh puh-leeze no! (Score:3)
So now Facebook is coming and siphoning data out of the Fediverse, and making shadow accounts from Fediverse user accounts?
Fuck that! I joined Mastodon and Lemmy specifically because I wanted nothing to do with Facebook. And now it's following me here? Really?? Good grief Facebok! Build your own playground without treading all over other people's sandboxes!
I sure hope a majority of Fediverse instances will refuse to federate with Facebook ones. We just don't need fucking Facebook here.
Meta will always be top-left of my FediBlock list (Score:3, Insightful)
And Threads' TOS will make it patently clear that they (think they) own whatever content touches their servers along with any related traffic and metadata that they'll hoover up. Meta/Facebook has no business polluting the Fediverse and trying to control the environment. It's the Microsoft "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" playbook and I'm convinced they'll try to wreck it if they can't control it. I will block Meta/Facebook in every environment I encounter them in from now until the heat death of the universe. I am tired of crappy, manipulative social media giants (Yes, we already know how they operate, thanks. Hard pass.) trying to stain anything and everything new that comes along to try to compete with them. With any luck it will be one giant attack surface against them.
3 Es (Score:3)
Leave us alone! (Score:2)
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Re: Leave us alone! (Score:2)
Correction (Score:2)
Correction. There isn't just one Eternal September. There are in infinite number of Eternal Septembers. Something, something, multiverse theory.
Time to dust off my plan to send random packets using obscure protocols, containing simple text messages. I only expect a few sysadmins to contact me after 10+ years, but they might be the most interesting people on the Internet.
Smells like desperation (Score:2)