Threads is adding fediverse content to your social feeds (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 day ago by tavostator@feddit.org to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 day ago

I'm surprised they're still interested in ActivityPub.

Hot Take: This is good because its easier for people to leave threads, since they can still contact their friends on threads. I do think having most instances block them is also good, so people can have a choice (I personally don't want threads).

[-] MimicJar@lemmy.world 6 points 22 hours ago

I'm not surprised, but I agree with the hot take, so maybe it's only warm.

I think they keep interest in ActivityPub in order to keep regulators concerned with Antitrust at bay. The Fediverse isn't a real threat in Meta's view and keeping an engineer or two on it in order to stay invested is worth the cost.

Threads can say they are making an honest effort to work with the larger open source community and open federated internet. As an added bonus, it isn't actually a lie. Now the effort they're putting in is the absolute minimum, but it's there.

Now I still do think this is a positive. While most people on Threads will probably never leave, it does introduce them to the wider Fediverse. It makes the Fediverse a less scary thing.

[-] deedan06_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 1 day ago

Guess all those blocks had a reason after all.

[-] Stillwater@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago

The fediverse feed isn’t algorithmically ranked, or subject to any of Threads’ rules or moderation; it’s just a reverse-chronological feed of stuff you follow.

'Member when Facebook was like that? You know, the way people want it?

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Still not fully integrated, but it's nice to see broader ActiviyPub adoption beyond "follow a handful of users who opted-in". I never expected Meta to be the company inching towards federation and not bluesky. Makes me wonder if Tumblr will ever follow through with their promises to federate.

edit: To the (sadly predictable) response that "Meta will screw you over in a heartbeat" YES, of COURSE they will, that's why it's GOOD to be able to access Threads content safely and privately from a non-Meta controlled platform.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 day ago

Nahhh, Meta sucks ass and will screw you over in a heartbeat. What's in it for them is the question.

[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 day ago

Data. User data. Always has been.

FB right now is probably 90% bots and AI. The Fediverse isn’t—for the moment being. I’m sure they found a way to tap into it by keeping a door open while pretending to help aerate the room.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 day ago

They also want to control the headlines that make it to the front page like other major instances do.

[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

Oh yes you’re right—forgot about that

[-] kobra@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

But what data would federating give them that they couldn’t just get on the public internet right now? They could already scrape all of this from mastodon already if data was all that they’re after.

It’s not just data they’re after.

[-] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

They also learn how their users interact with it.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago

Tumblr is being reworked to have a Wordpress backend right now, and Wordpress already has well working ActivityPub support, so yes, Tumblr will very likely happen once they made the switch.

I suspect the technical debt in Tumblr was larger than expected when the first announce federation support, and now it became nearly a full rewrite, which takes time.

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Tumblr also downsized to 25 employees (including T&S). I don't expect anything groudbreaking from them soon.

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago

Got it, very interesting! I look forward to it being worked out soon, Wordpress federation is awesome.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 day ago

Ewww

[-] fujiwood@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Shit.

[-] vermaterc@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

Honestly, I thought Meta talking about Fediverse integration was just marketing bullshit. Are they really doing it? 🤔

[-] gon@lemm.ee 16 points 1 day ago

EEE, sorry.

[-] kobra@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

How come these accusations aren’t thrown at piefed? Like it’s almost the exact same thing as lemmy just with more features like multi-community feeds, which could entice users over to piefed and leave current lemmy behind.

Or is EEE only EEE if it’s a corporation doing it?

Edit: I’m legit asking, I objectively don’t understand the difference between the two unless we’re taking motive into account? But that’s hard to prove motive either way.

[-] gon@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago

It's only EEE if it's an entity that could be reasonable expected to do it.

Sure, Piefed could adopt ActivityPub, extend it with proprietary capabilities, and then use that to strongly disadvantage its competitors. However, Piefed is a fully open-source project without ads or any money-making aspect at all, started by some random dude from New Zealand. Not exactly prime EEE grounds, you know?

[-] klu9@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

Basically, yes. EEE is a strategy developed by a dominant company whose revenue stream came from paid proprietary software and services but which embraced open standards with the goal of vanquishing the threat to their business model posed by that openness and maintaining/recovering their proprietary domination.

Does ActivityPub being open and used by many different projects & organizations pose a threat to Piefed's business model? Is Piefed a powerful company that built that power on a proprietary model and seeks to preserve that power by embracing, extending, and extinguishing ActivityPub? With the goal of maintaining/recovering proprietary domination?

No. So it ain't EEE.

[-] LukaFLBernaudeau@europe.pub 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, EEE is the software version of abusing your market dominance which may have been obtained via innovation (i.e. when Apple launched the iPhone) or enhancement of an already existing good or service (i. e. Lemmy).

[-] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

They've been doing it for quite a while. Very slowly. The problem is it's currently unidirectional, and opt-in. I imagine its the same reason Apple has adopted RCS (also opt-in): legal pressure.

If they just ignore it completely, legislators might completely fuck them like they did Apple with alternative payments. But if they kinda half-ass it then they can point to it and say "SEE, WE HAVE INTEROP! NO MONOPOLY!"