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.
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. 🤔
Called it. I'd be prepared to bet that in a few more weeks, Meta's just gonna quietly drop the idea of ActivityPub integration all together. To me at least, it always seemed like the whole "planned Fediverse integration" for Threads was just them trying to jump on what they saw as the latest buzzword bandwagon.
Had Threads been released a few months earlier, you can bet they'd have been talking about "Metaverse integration" instead.
Honestly this is why the whole “Meta will kill the fediverse” thing people were saying never really convinced me. They just don’t seem to care, I mean it’s been a month and they still have no real plans to actually federate.
If I don”t want something to happen, I”d much rather a corporation say “a long way out” than “never going to happen”. Something on the back burner of a corporation is as good as dead. Something an exec said no to just needs a change in leadership to make happen.
Euuuuh...
Is it me or is some parts of the article setting up/opposing LGBTQ+ against non-lgbtq?
"One of the interesting dynamics of the discussion so far is so much of the resistance to Meta has come from queer and trans people, and that most of the loudest supporters of Meta in the fediverse are cis guys."
This sentence may be technicaly right, but it's sooooo stupid mostly interpretation.
Edit: wrong and uncalled for
Starting from there, the article seems to be as much about "us va them" than threads and meta...
Without activepub integration, I just see threads as another Twitter. I don't think any of these walled gardens are very interesting, especially Twitter copies such as Mastodon or Threads. It's just another platform for the few to get their message out to the many. It's boring in almost all cases.
Threads seems to have achieved its immediate strategic goal of setting fire to zombie Twitter so that it'd stay dead; building it into an actual Twitter replacement could take years, and in the meanwhile there's plenty of time for Mastodon et al to keep hoovering up users too.
Personally, I don't post anything on Threads, and haven't really tried to obtain any followers there, but I do log on and view/like content from famous people I used to follow on Twitter in the hopes that if they get enough engagement on Threads they'll cut out Twitter altogether.
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.
Called it. I said this last week when everyone was still hysterical about blocking Meta:
Everyone is talking about defederating preemptively because of XMPP and EEE. But the very fact that we know about EEE means that it's much less likely to succeed.
Zuck is seeing the metaverse crash and burn and he knows he needs to create the next hot new thing before even the boomers left on facebook get bored with it. Twitter crashing and burning is a perfect business opportunity, but he can't just copy Twitter - it has to be "Twitter, but better". So, doing what any exec does, he looks for buzzwords and trends to make his new product more exciting. Hence the fediverse.
From Meta's standpoint, they don't need the Fediverse. Meta operates at a vastly different scale. Mastodon took 7 years to reach ~10M users - Threads did that in a day or two. My guess is that Zuck is riding on the Fediverse buzzword. I'm sure whatever integration he builds in future will be limited.
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?)
Actually I still think meta doing activity pub would be overall a good thing and a win for all of us. Users should decide what will be the best platform for them to use, free from any content locking reasons.
Meta being able to create completely new social network overnight and still getting more users then entire Fendiverse without the need to open up anything... That feels more like a loose for me.
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.
I haven't heard a single valid reason why federating with Meta is bad. Only people misunderstanding how technology works.
edit: remember pretty much all objections can be solved by personally blocking the domain, rather then forcing it to be blocked for everyone. Also that all the information Meta could possibly get, they can already get regardless because all of our content is public.