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.
I think they were ever only going to do it if Threads failed.
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.
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 …
Imagine of the EU mandated all social networks to be interoperable…
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.
Yes all of those. I think Cory Doctorow calls it crecom or something like that
I think it’s more likely that they’ll hope demand is high enough that the EU is forced to let them in.
I think we’re in violent agreement here: getting the EU to drop their objections is certainly one way around them! So yeah, they’ll probably try to use the demand for Threads to push back on the DMA’s anti-trust-ish provisions (which as I understand is the current blockage). And then they’ll try to use their ActivityPub integration to push back on the interoperability requirements, no doubt characterizing them as unrealistic. It’s predictable but still irritating.
yeah, they’ll need to fix a lot of their permissions if they want to get into the EU - which is probably a much higher concern than some piddly mastodon users.
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+
Agree, if Threads majorly flops they’d just pull the plug, add they’ve done before.
I still don’t get their target audience for Threads.
Facebook users don’t want to leave their weird boomer Internet bubble. Instagram users will continue posting pictures on Instagram and advertise their
linktr.eeaccount where they link to their 18+ content because they’re not allowed to link in directly from Instagram, and 𝕏 users … well … they will continue using 𝕏.Ironically the only ones wo really care about Threads is people in the Fediverse.
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.