Threads isn't ever going to connect to Mastodon, so stop pretending that it is
knollslaw.substack.com
knollslaw.substack.com
Threads will support ActivityPub. They already have UI elements in place for it in the app (like showing your home server domain on your profile), so there's no reason to believe that isn't their intention. The problem, if any, will be on the other end. Plenty of Mastodon/Fediverse servers have already stated their intention of blocking Meta's access to their networks, so even in the best case the end result will be a fragmented mess.
That's the second link in the article.
The CEO/founder of Mastodon isn't uniquely positioned to predict Facebook's behavior.
Replacing it with that article would change the topic. Sure if we change the topic, that article is more insightful. But this thread is about TFA.
Likely certain instances have said they’ll federate with it in the meetings, and for other instances that block them Meta will say “Well your admins are the ones who blocked us! Take your problems up with them” to any users that wish to interact with Threads on their instance.
Also likely they see the future of social changing and would rather be the ones steering the standard.
These are worth nothing, though?
The skepticism is informed by looking at the history of the company, not just what they're saying right now.
FWIW, I do think they will federate eventually. I don't think they'll do so because they want user accounts to actually move around, etc, etc. Strategically, it's valuable to keep a handle on the Fediverse, since they're big enough to exert control over it should they so choose, and they can be better positioned to do so if they start from a position of being federated.
In particular, note their public statements about this allowing you to keep your followers when deplatformed. It might be that this is the answer they want to give right-wing lawmakers: if you break our terms of service, you’re free to move to Truth Social.
Their very name (to me it's still Facebook) is a grift about decentralization. So of course they're keen to make multiple statements about it.
I don't fully agree with the article because I think they might cynically launch a useless ActivityPub integration. Or they'll do it only for business profiles or something...
Another thing is they could attempt to do it in a self-serving way with crypto like they did with Diem. That is they could be legitimately interested in NFT grifts but talking about ActivityPub because it's trendy right now. They have no timeline, so their first foray into ActivityPub could involve blockchain tech.
If Meta wanted to, Threads would already talk to Mastodon.
ActivityPub integration is the least of their worries.
Apple creates e2e encryption on a new product and HN screams that we still can’t trust them and we need to live in a fairday cage with zero human contact to truly not be tracked. Or in this instance when Meta does a reasonable thing and the same people scream that they’re still evil and we can’t trust them and we’re gullible for thinking it’s a good product.
Some people are so anti establishment that they can’t acknowledge a good thing when they see it, I’m afraid.
Unless you are inexperienced or new to the field, you should have no excuse to not be aware of the endless examples over the last couple decades. Sneering at people doesn't make you correct.
If they are committed to it then the clause has no effect. If they do back out and the customer feels betrayed and they feel like Meta lied to them to get them to signup then they can demand Meta to remove their presence and pay the amount Meta made off of them by tricking them.
Simple and clean solution with aligned incentives. If Meta does not intend to back out then they have nothing to lose.
I'm hardly going to defend Facebook/Meta, but by and large, WhatsApp is still separate from Facebook properties. It doesn't require connecting identities to any other Meta-owned property to use it, and all messages on it are end-to-end encrypted[0] - a change which happened after Facebook acquired WhatsApp. There was a proposed change about six months or a year ago, but it was walked back after public criticism.
There are a lot of things to criticize Facebook for, but WhatsApp has remained, at least so far, pretty independent - and if anything, more privacy-preserving than it was at the time Facebook acquired it.
Of all the independent products that Facebook has degraded over time and locked in to its walled garden (Instagram, Oculus, etc.), WhatsApp is the outlier, not the rule.
[0] Every time this is brought up on HN, it always devolves into a discussion about how "the client is not open-source so you can't trust it", followed by an inevitable segue into reproducible builds and federated clients, etc. etc.
Was that change ever walked back? I recall that Whatsapp wanted to send metadata (not the messages themselves, but phone numbers, IP addresses, etc) to Facebook/Meta for advertising purposes. I know it was delayed, but I deleted my Whatsapp account before having to accept the new terms.
Imagine if instead of acquiring WhatsApp, Facebook allowed you to install its Messenger app and sign up with a phone number instead of a Facebook account. Would you then consider the Messenger app to be appropriately separate and independent from Facebook? It has end-to-end encryption.
But if the statements purporting to be factual reports are true, the overall story, give or take, seems to be that they were planning to kinda piggyback on Mastodon to pump their numbers up in the early stage, and ideally, kinda deal it a big traffic blow, but maybe that's my cold Meta-hating heart having its say. Then, puffed up on the "easy" acquisition of the unique Mastodon traffic, then move on Musk.
But Musk really seems to be trying to just end the ordeal as quickly as possible at this point, and given that the majority of Twitter people seem to find Mastodon horrid and want a new Twitter, they might just put AP aside for the moment. One can only hope.
But you should probably treat it like you should treat phone manufacturers saying the next software update will solve all of the problems - you can only review what you have now, not what'll come in the future.
Easy way to double your imaginary internet money if you're confident of the real answer.
https://manifold.markets/tb/will-metas-threads-successfully-...
Am I missing something here or are they saying "I'm allowed" to buy my own Mana in order to donate 1% of what I purchased to charity? Doesn't make much sense, or I'm not understanding it at all. I'm betting all my Mana on the latter.
So yes, you're missing something.
(I suspect that they may take a tax write off out of the deal, so are somehow still profiting.)
M1000 costs $11.99, so it’s not an exact conversion of 100:1 when you’re paying cash for Mana.
[0] - https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Charitable-donation-prog...
To be clear, it's not like that at all.
Instagram users aren't automatically converted into Threads users. It requires a new app and an affirmative action by the user to create their Threads account using their Instagram login credentials.
Tell me. Do you know what's Facebook Lasso? It was also a FB app that used FB login. You remember Flash app? Why it flopped? What about IGTV? Used the Instagram account....
Social graph is important, but is not the most important thing, or else every dev would be rich by just using "Login with Google".
The reason 100 million signup here is because Twitter is tanking - there's a demand for a twitter-like social-network. Doesn't mean that people gonna use Threads of course.
And anyway, the case with Google is different because you didn't needed to download anything - they turned your account into Google+. Wanna comment something on Youtube? Ops, use Google+.
I've recently been thinking about whether it's possible to add some form of limited distribution using encryption. Perhaps hitch-hiking on WebAuthn public keys? I have no idea if that would work, though.
This can be confusing for beginning users. There is a link in the interface for "global posts". It doesn't actually show all posts, only the public ones that someone on your instance has subscribed to. For someone on a small-ish instance with like minded people this is a good thing, as it means there's a higher chance of a post being interesting to me.
> There is a link in the interface for "global posts". It doesn't actually show all posts, only the public ones that someone on your instance has subscribed to.
I can't claim to know what your exact vision is, but that seems to line up with AUTHORIZED_FETCH [0], an existing (off by default) setting on Mastodon servers.
[0] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/config/#authorized_fetch
The process would go something like this:
1. Interoperate with Mastodon and onboard users, quietly hoovering up all the data.
2. Wait 12 months to get a userbase.
3. Deprecate the connection to Mastodon, forcing people back into the garden.
I've seen a stat of over 13m users: https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount
1. A lot of Instagram users who had an extremely low barrier to entry, which could mean a low intention to post.
2. Little organic content.
3. Influencers and bots wanting to be "First!".
4. The people hyping it are almost exclusively using it to hate on Musk. Not Twitter, but Musk. Very few people are actually excited about giving Meta more data.
I don't user any of this garbage so I don't know or care. But I think it's entirely reasonable to acknowledge that the people on Mastadon want to post and use it, and that bots basically have no interest. It's small, but actually organic content.
This is just simple minded thinking. Of course a bot doesn't care, but it's owners absolutely do care. If you think bots will not infect Mastodon, you're seriously limiting your critical thinking skills.
I'm sorry, I didn't think that was a distinction that needed to be made.
I suspect it’s a tough balancing act. One where you need the interesting accounts as well as the masses, because you can’t have the masses without interesting things and you can’t have advertisement revenue without the masses.
I don’t actually think Threads has too much to worry about from Mastodon. Personally I think something “better” is needed before we get any real Twitter replacement, but I can see why Meta would want to keep the door open. So that if they can’t get the “interesting” accounts to join, they can still get the content from those accounts by linking up to Mastodon. Well, that or maybe Meta is actually gearing up to become the SoMe that doesn’t lock its platforms down. The EU is likely not going to stop by forcing messaging apps to speak with each other after all, and there is obviously a lot of value in being the “phone book” of the world.
But if the theory is that you need Mastodon to bring in the interesting content because their 100M userbase can't or won't produce that content, the federation would be needed indefinitely. It won't be that federating with Mastodon for a year bootstraps their own content production. If people writing interesting things aren't willing to go to a platform with 100M users now, they won't be willing to do it in an year either.
Meta can have its cake and eat it to by being happy with owning the vast majority of the Fediverse. As a bonus, this appeases regulators.
They pushed so much ragebait in 2016-2021 on facebook.
They continue to push so much coombait on IG.
Like, they know how to manipulate us, they have the data.
Wonder what they are going to use to bait people into compulsively checking this new app.
Which, also contained the answer to what "coombait" is:
> What is 'coombait'?
> Porn adjacent material. Technically SFW usually but not the kind of thing you want your coworkers seeing you look at.
I try not to use endless-scrolling social media too much, so I don't know to what degree it is an issue as the OP suggests, but it's not hard to see how it would foster pornography addiction.
There's a lot of softcore porn on these sites that are arguably pushed at children who might not even seek it out. Does a mom know that she has to block twitch and instagram when she blocks pornhub?
Yes? It's the task of parents to monitor what their children do on the internet and how they use social media, not Instagram's. What is it with this new generation of morally enraged prudes coming after every platform because they outsourced parenting to an ipad?
Also I'm fairly certain looking at hot people is why 90% of users are on instagram. It's like when tumblr banned porn, probably worst mistake ever made in internet moderation history
Hehe, this is also why I was confused!
And yeah, knowing more context now, I agree re parenting. Just feels like common sense that one needs to treat all social media as at least as bad/unsuitable as a British tabloid.
When television was invented, there were various societal reasons (ie prudishness) you could be pretty sure that your child watching TV wouldn't be exposed to anything "too heinous" even if the parent put zero effort into parenting.
Sure, we don't have to be as absurdly puritan as we were back in the fifties but at the same time maybe "require every parent to be a near expert in childhood development and media consumption and whether your teenager is watching too many boobs in places there maybe shouldn't be boobs" isn't the panacea some people seem to think. At the very least, companies shouldn't be taking money from kids through the medium of softcore porn, and arguably they shouldn't even if they are funded by advertising to those kids instead of like "bits" and donations.
I don't really think we should allow "selling softcore porn and sex to teenagers" as a business model. Porn isn't inherently bad, but kids aren't mentally developed enough to make smart decisions about paying for porn.
If your suggested solution is "watch every single thing your child does 24/7", that's not a solution, and it won't work for most people. We shouldn't be leaving less privileged families to be freely exploited just because they don't have the time, or resources to properly moderate their children's media consumption. Mom works 80 hours a week, when is she supposed to research how to keep her child from being seduced by sex workers and parasocial relationships?
Personal experience, is that this is extremely user dependent (it is a fair argument that 0 is the correct number of these accounts to ever see).
Much like TikTok [1], Instagram zones in on your preferences, and from my experience, does so with the same mechanism - time spent watching any piece of content.
The best demonstrator for this was a meme I can't find anymore, where some teens held a race to see who saw "coombait" first. Some conked within 10 seconds, some took a full minute (of relentless scrolling, that is) to find it.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/inside-tiktoks-highly-secre...
However there is def some dark patterns of recommendations, I'm not alone in this complaint.
While Fediverse integration adds moderation complexity, I see few downsides for them to integrate and stay integrated. The portion of Mastodon that hates Facebook seems determined to segregate itself.
Things like mastodon represent a Jailbreaking of the captive user. If the goal is to monetize the consumer as the product, you could do no worse than to free that consumer from the cattle yard and offer them the ability to graze at their discretion alone.
Given regulatory issues with data sharing between different Meta properties they have a massive incentive to add activitypub support. It would be an easy way to appease to the regulators.
Maybe the goal is to create a new social network to fill the void that Elon’s Twitter 2.0 left. Maybe a company can actually do a genuinely decent thing every once in a while…
Sure. But I have zero confidence, based on previous actions, that company is Facebook/Meta.
1. Twitter founder founded BlueSky as he was distressed with things he had to do to get capital and wanted a twitter successor that is community based and funded...hence bluesky's out in the open connection to mastadon via similar protocols.
2. Meta Threads is just way to revitalize FB which has an advertising spying on users upcoming problem with EU out lawing it. Hence Meta's focus on US market solution only.
BlueSky doesn't connect to Mastodon. It uses a different protocol for federation.
1) to protect their users from Meta inhaling user data, and as a source of spam, harassment etc. If Threads is not defederated upfront, it would be blocked soon after.
2) The sheer volume from the data from Threads is not going to be manageable.
So stop pretending that they are.
If you're running a public Mastodon instance, Facebook has surely, one way or another, managed to "inhale" your user data, at least for market research. Only way to avoid that is to run a private instance, and then connecting to Threads/Facebook/Meta wouldn't be a threat regardless.
Mastodon doesn't protect user data in any meaningful way. That data is all available to meta if they want it.
That may be true (yes, I've seen Bloonface's essay on this), but it doesn't mean that Threads will be federated with the rest of Mastodon, i.e. allowing user interaction across instances, threads content showing up on other mastodon user's feeds and vice versa. Blocking that is what "defederated" means.
https://me.pcmag.com/en/social-media-1/18060/threads-wants-t...