this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 183 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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. 🤔

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
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[–] ren 94 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think they were ever only going to do it if Threads failed.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 ...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine of the EU mandated all social networks to be interoperable..

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Like "standard phone calls have always been interoperable" ?

Like "batteries should be replaceable" ?

Or "documents file formats should be open" ?

ActivityPub should probably become a login standard, somehow as standard as SAML. Any social network should propose to login with AP, just like any social let you use email or phone number to register.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still, my guess is that they’ll figure out a way around the EU’s objections to Threads

I think it's more likely that they'll hope demand is high enough that the EU is forced to let them in.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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+

[–] JayPalm 7 points 1 year ago

Agree, if Threads majorly flops they’d just pull the plug, add they’ve done before.

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[–] jocanib 12 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I'll stop fighting when Meta no longer exists.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Every “mainstream” (ie: not tech focused) source I have seen discussing threads has been keenly missing the whole federation component and focused on it being a twitter replacement competition.

The whole federation thing is probably too abstract for most.

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[–] WhoRoger 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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".

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't trust them. So this means nothing.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

When a company says “a long way out” it often ends up meaning “never”. Fingers crossed.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A month isn't very long, they haven't even figured out their basic features - this was more a "maybe later this year" timeframe. It could be done quickly if they decided to start by reproducing mastodon and going from there, but building something that federates but is highly monetizable takes time - honestly they were probably pleased by the numbers and decided to go for monetization first

Making it clear they are unwelcome was the point though.

It seems they've put the idea on the back burner after we largely made our position clear, but it's not unlikely that they try to quietly federate down the road... Every time they think about it, we have to make them believe this would be more trouble than it's worth

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I personally believe that Meta never intended Threads to be support Activitypub and just chose it so they could do the bare minimum to comply with the EU digital markets act.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the 1004th time I am seeing people mentioning this article.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mentioned it 3 times in this last day since I read it! Maybe it is spreading.

I do it because I think it is the most important point on the fediverse. The fediverse is a tool of freedom, morals, ethics, for those that want to be connected, something that no commercial entity will offer. And it's ok for it to not grow at all costs, or be the widespread available platform. It just needs to be present and faithful to itself.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I keep seeing this article posted to scare people, but Lemmy and Mastodon aren't in the same situation as XMPP. XMPP had barely any users outside of Google Talks, with the overwhelming majority of interactions on XMPP being between Google Talks users. Google was tying their product to a public standard that they couldn't develop however they wanted, all for compatibility with very few users. When they pulled out of using XMPP to develop their own platform, the sheer lack of users on XMPP outside of Google Talks became apparent. This will not be the case with Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon/ect. Mastodon has 10 million registered users, and Lemmy has hundreds of thousands. The majority of both service's users are not about to switch over to sell their soul to the Zucc, so if Facebook federates for a while before defederating, Lemmy and Mastodon will have as large and robust communities as they have now, and the services will live on unlike with XMPP

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It always felt like a backup plan. Or maybe that plan was before they remembered they had 2 billion users on Instagram they could bootstrap off.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] CautiousBrowser 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Good, fuckem

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

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