1y ago

Threads will allow you to follow Mastodon users by year-end, according to Meta meeting details | TechCrunch

Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed. A new blog post by Tom Coates, the co-founder of an older decentralized app called Planetary, details the events of a December meeting at Meta’s offices where the Threads team had reached out to members of the fediverse community to get feedback about the Instagram-led project to take on X with a decentralized app that will eventually interoperate with others in the fediverse by way of the ActivityPub protocol.

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I mean I get why people running open source, small software projects are going to find it hard not to be convinced just by the fact that they are probably getting their ego stroked super hard by meeting with extremely powerful and rich people… but this is such a stupid idea.
We don’t need meta, they don’t DO anything. What does meta do for the fediverse? Sure you can argue it brings in a ton of users but meta is a for-profit entity and it is never going to truly bring those users into the fediverse. Meta has an absurd amount of money, if they haven’t committed to creating a fediverse like idea in the past what makes everyone think now is different?
Why is a massive corporation with the money to fund 1000 fediverse software projects coming to a bunch of volunteers for help? Seriously, think about it, it really doesn’t make sense unless meta isn’t coming here for help but rather to mine and extract the value here for itself. We have ALREADY built most of the software tools that a too-big-to-function tech company with a lot of programmers could help with anyways, it is far too late in the game for meta to do anything meaningful there besides speed things up a little.
If we accept meta into the fediverse it might seem like we are winning by technically adding a ton of users but for heaven’s sake people need to realize winning doesn’t mean giving all your shit to the other side. The fediverse will become barely any better than the current corporate social network world, so what is the point?
I mean, they are NEVER going to invest in a significant amount of human moderators, that would basically admit the business model of a for-profit social network is fundamentally busted. They will “try” to do it with “””Ai””” and also through underpaid employees in moderation farms in third world countries who are constantly getting traumatized from having to see all the most offensive shit… but it is never going to work.
The question is, why did you come here in the first place? For me, letting meta in violates most of those reasons.
- Wait, you mean you don't like how algorithms and ads have evolved to almost be content at this point. You don't want a bunch of for-profit ads suggesting you buy things you don't need? Lol, you're not in it for the cash grab? :OOOOO WHAT!?!?!?!?!
- What does meta do for the fediverse?
  By that logic though, what does lemmy.ml do for the fediverse? Or mas.to? Or any specific instance? Nothing, they're one cog in a pool of federated instances.
  And make no mistake, either the fediverse stays so tiny companies ignore it other than what Meta is doing now (to pre-empty EU legislation so they can point at supporting open interoperable formats), or we have to accept commercial enterprises will flood the fedi-space anyways if it takes off.
  
  And make no mistake, either the fediverse stays so tiny companies ignore it other than what Meta is doing now (to pre-empty EU legislation so they can point at supporting open interoperable formats), or we have to accept commercial enterprises will flood the fedi-space anyways if it takes off.
  I agree, the entrance of large corporations into the fediverse is nearly inevitable and I am ok with that. What matters is how and when they do it and how that changes the politics, identity and community of the fediverse. WE have the cards because as you say corporate social networks that basically have monopolies are going to eventually be forced by regulation (unless we are on even shittier timeline than I thought) to join the fediverse or do something similar.
  Think about the difference though between welcoming in meta to the fediverse like they are some cool popular kid that decided to join our lame party and now everyone wants to come to the party vs rejecting meta because we know their offer isn’t genuine and making them come back later to the fediverse in a much more precarious situation where they HAVE to work something out with us or they face geometrically growing legal and populist hostility that threatens the existence of their company?
  Which situation is more likely to result in a relationship more advantageous to normal people and communities on the fediverse? Which one puts more power in the hands of small communities and regular people on the fediverse? Which one is less likely to result in meta hijacking the public’s perception of the fediverse and subverting the reasons that the original denizens of the fediverse came here for?
  
  lemmy.ml is the flagship instance. that's like asking what mastodon.social does for the fediverse.
  
  Meta could take over the fediverse pretty easily once they've been here for a while.
  Nothing, they're one cog in a pool of federated instances.
  Yes, Threads will be technically just an instance of a federated network with thousands of instances. But Threads is so fucking big in comparison that most posts will come from there. And at that point, they can impose their algorithms and recommendations on us.
  
  this is a joke, right? lemmy instances which i participate in have done a far better job of moderation and protecting minorities than any experience i have had on a meta product. i cant begin to tell you how many times ive reported content on meta services that is a blatant call to violence, only to have it come back “no violations found.” and im far from the only one
  safety. safety is what lemmy.ml/lemmy.blahaj.zone/mas.to bring to the fediverse. and where one instance fails, another is available to pick up slack. i refuse to subscribe to the notion that playing gullible for an institution which profits off the attention span of children is the only way for me to socialize online. you shouldn’t either. we all need to get over ourselves with this “must take off” language.

And what if I don't want to be followed from Meta?
- Don't post on the internet. If you think Meta doesn't also crawl the web the old school way like Google also does to train AI and such, you're seriously out of touch with reality.
  
  normie centrist take. support privacy oriented organizations and politicians. ask your instance to block threads and if they don’t, move to one that works for you and your safety. giving up and being okay with billionaires playing fuck-all with your data at no cost is playing right into their hands.
  
  Giving them your own data legally and that they illegally fetch your data is not same.
- Well, the good news is that according to this list, your instance already blocks Threads.
  
  Is there any way for me to know if a Kbin instance also blocked Threads?
- We held a vote
- just post as unlisted like you could from the start?
  
  Please explain. Unlisted as in without a username?

Brace yourselves, "fascists won't be able to follow me" posts incoming.
- https://fedipact.online

December meeting at Meta’s offices where the Threads team had reached out to members of the fediverse community to get feedback about the Instagram-led project
Is this the one people thought Ruud was a part of?
- All I know is that Stux's instances was on the fence regarding Threads until a little meeting with Ruud somewhere in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. 😉
  
  Who is Stux?
  Edit: they run mstdn.social

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed.
A new blog post by Tom Coates, the co-founder of an older decentralized app called Planetary, details the events of a December meeting at Meta’s offices where the Threads team had reached out to members of the fediverse community to get feedback about the Instagram-led project to take on X with a decentralized app that will eventually interoperate with others in the fediverse by way of the ActivityPub protocol.
Meta did, in fact, start testing ActivityPub integration in December, allowing Threads posts to appear on Mastodon.
In addition, this rule would potentially come into play when a user banned from Meta’s platform moved their content to another Mastodon server.
Coates suggested various reasons why Meta may be pursuing this — perhaps to thwart coming regulation or to take over Twitter/X’s place in the zeitgeist as new owner Elon Musk turns it into an everyday app, potentially diluting its value as a fast-breaking news network and home to conversations.
Explained Flipboard CEO Mike McCue in a conversation with TechCrunch last month, what excited him about Mastodon and ActivityPub was that it wasn’t just about where social media was heading, it was where the web itself was going.
The original article contains 709 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- when a user banned from Meta’s platform moved their content to another Mastodon server.
  Isn't this a huge problem for the fediverse where a user would them need to be banned twice? It feels like Meta is pushing their problems out to others to deal with.
  I'm not sure if this is the intended mechanism but it does seem like a problem for moderators. I hope this is being addressed or fediverse mods will be swamped with bad actors considering Meta's potentially huge user base.

So I can be on one near-empty platform that can get followed by another near-empty platform?
- Yeah basically. Although I don't know, is Threads that small? Bluesky is the most successful alternative to Twitter from what I see around companies stating where they are posting?
  
  It's hard to say how many active users are on Threads, but of 160 million registered users there's probably somewhere between 20 and 50 million (somewhat) active ones. That's more people than are signed up to Bluesky, as far as I can gather.
  A lot of Twitter addicts are going to Bluesky, whereas Threads feeds off the huge user base of Instagram. Bluesky just looks more relevant seen from the Fediverse because it attracts a bunch of dorks.
  
  Twitter is where the people are, and the fascists make up less than half. It's like living in America: stick to your neighborhood and you'll be fine, go through the trending hashtags and expect a world of hurt.

hopefully the other way around too; threads has a lot of the mainstream people i used to follow when i had twitter and i'd love to follow them again.

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