Adam Mosseri spells out Threads’ plans for the fediverse | The head of Instagram says a full integration with the fediverse could take ‘the better part of a year’
Adam Mosseri spells out Threads’ plans for the fediverse
I'm surprised it's taking them so long. It seems like it shouldn't be that much of a technical challenge for an organization with Meta's resources, especially when it was planned before the service even launched.
Could be just tactics. Remember the uproar the first time it was said threads would federate? Suddenly they were "not ready yet".
Now in the second go, the idea got already normalized and there are more pro-meta comments. And they will stay silent and non-intrusive at the beginning.
Zuck is really big into early adaptation (metaverse i.e.), they see potential in the fediverse and their first objective is to be part of it, then grow with it and finally take advantage of it, once the time is right.
It's really not a good thing that some people think the fediverse is going to go up in flames as soon as meta joins. That's obviously not going to happen and sets wrong expectations that could lead to more acceptance.
I've not seen any pro meta posts. Unless this is meant in the same vein as those calling out Israel are portrayed as pro hamas wrongly. What I have seen is a lot of baseless speculation, and uninformed opinion being thrown around as fact.
We should definitely keep an eye on every capitalist or authoritarian. Because they'd gladly sacrifice our lives and privacy for a few dollars more. But anyone who thinks integrating their own servers is going to give them any more information than the servers already give anyone who asks. Has a flawed understanding of what is possible and likely.
This is all akin to the people who never used XMPP claiming Google killed it. Which is another bit of fear uncertainty and doubt being thrown out to stir people up in these threads as well. I have used XMPP consistently for the last 20+ years. I'm logged in this very minute. They just had a 2023 Google summer of code conclude.
We should watch meta like a hawk. And of course not give them special treatment. But they want to connect to us. We have the keys and the power if they don't want to play by the rules. We don't have to federate with them. They're going to collect the data regardless. But the enemy of our enemy can still be useful.
I do imagine they have a dirty trick in mind and I'm not sure what it is yet. Perhaps they aren't either.
There's also an opportunity though. Threads users will get exposed to open source, independently-hosted alternatives they wouldn't have heard about otherwise. Some of them will switch. If those projects can offer a better user experience than Threads, more of them will switch.
With a service that size, they're gonna have to move slow, make sure things don't break, and try to minimize downtime.
Take your time, Mark III Zucker-borg. I'm in no rush for you to screw up yet another web site with your ads and your propaganda.
Take your time. Take forever.
My takeaways:
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.”
You can only follow other threads accounts?
At the moment, he says the team plans to require accounts to be public and that users “explicitly opt in” to showing their posts on other federated servers. But the team is still considering making this the default, with the choice to opt out, instead.
They're planning on using the fediverse content and server space without providing any.
The Threads team wants to let replies from other platforms show up inside of Threads. “It’s a bad experience now that I have to leave the Threads app to see replies I’m getting from the broader community,”
It's the content they want the most, this makes it clear if you have to leave their app to reply to someone on another instance. We're the zoo.
This is a key one: follower portability. “Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app / server,” Mosseri writes. “I believe that it’s important that creators own their relationship with their audience.”
The bolded words makes me think that they're not going to do any of that, lol
Please instance owners, don't wait and see.
This is a key one: follower portability. “Eventually, it should also be possible to enable creators to leave Threads and take their followers with them to another app / server,” Mosseri writes. “I believe that it’s important that creators own their relationship with their audience.”
How do they benefit from it though? 🤔
They benefit by being able to say to regulators, especially in the EU, that they aren't a monopoly that locks people into their ecosystem. They avoid expensive legal battles, fines, and possibly being forced to open their other, more lucrative silos. These are lesser benefits, but they also get cred for doing something cool, get to position themselves as a better alternative to Twitter, and might get to say that they beat Bluesky to full federation.
That's reasonable although I believe it's just not how they do things. This feature lets their users to move to ad-free mastodon instances including those that signed fedi-pact. And it will be available in a few clicks in their app (I suppose it will).
they beat Bluesky to full federation.
I also think they're more interested in Bluesky.
Great, so he is already talking about how to extend activityPub? He says that like this function will be a one way street. This is literally what many here are talking about.
He's literally talking about the ability to migrate accounts, or the very least export your data. Which is a feature on many platforms of Fediverse. There's no "extend" whatsoever
If I understand correctly he's talking about the ability to export your account data and then import it to another compatible fedi server. Other software (mastodon, latest version of lemmy, etc) also do it on a client side, so I don't think any changes to AP will be necessary.
May be the whole plan is to kill ActivityPub or they want all the data to train AI or target ads.
In the view of Suckerberg and Mosseri : In the future there will be no Fediverse exist, only Threadverse
Well they can plan it if they want to, but I'm sure many instances will just end up blocking them and there isn't anything they can do about it. But on the other hand, having such a large backing is making things much easier for Threads.
Interesting. I'm on Mastedon, but not active. I'm curious if I'll notice any changes by next year.
Is threads still even active? The few users I knew on it don't use it anymore.
That might be why they want to start integrating. Get a free user base and poach content to make it look like positive activity.
Is threads still even active?
Yes
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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 the updates will roll out “in stages,” and he recognizes that the “better part of a year” timeline is a long one.
“That’s a lot longer than I, or anybody on the team, wants, but it’s the reality given all the other work we need to be balance,” he says.
I’ve watched a Threads video from Mosseri on Mastodon, that rules!
Update December 15th, 5:57PM ET: Added screenshots of Mosseri’s thread.
The original article contains 171 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 17%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
oh damn.
Ideally people would all form cooperatives and host their own instances on social media and their would be no corporate interests on the fediverse. The fediverse has a chance to to gain access to more content by federating with threads. But I don’t know if the costs or worth it. But if we don’t take the chance we may never have the mind share to become mainstream
Well I can't afford to pay for that much server traffic, can any of us?
Where will we be when meta own all the servers?
Exactly. Mastodon already is a disk space hog even with severely limited retention on my instance.
Dont trust facebook.