Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, teased a new app called Threads that is set to take on Twitter for real-time digital conversations.
I have absolutely no intention of using Threads (for obvious reasons: meta data collection), but I’m interested to see if it can push the fediverse into mainstream conversation. I basically only used twitter for sports news so if those reporters end up on Threads and I can follow them from Mastodon I wouldn’t mind. Of course none of that matters if it’s not on ActivityPub like it’s rumored to be, or if they implement any kind of restrictions to users not on their instance, like following users or liking posts.
It’s still not clear how connected Threads will be to the Fediverse. I just don’t buy that Facebook will show their users content they can’t moderate and control unless they start defederating with everything.
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yeah I’m not holding my breath haha I was not expecting it to be on ActivityPub so was surprised to read that rumor, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if they are very restricted or defederate basically everyone else
Apparently it won’t be federating with other ActivityPub instances right away, but planned for shortly post-launch
I went to go see if there was any new info and just saw that as well, kind of encouraging to see it confirmed they will work with mastodon though
from this article: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/5/23784160/instagram-threads-twitter-competitor-web
You don’t want Meta pushing Mastodon into the mainstream. That will mean most Mastodon users are on Meta’s instance and then they’ll just follow the playbook to kill Mastodon as an open source project by embracing it, extending it, and then extinguishing it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Basically this: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Meta is not a friend to FOSS, privacy, choice, decentralization, or anything the fediverse stands for. The only thing they could possibly gain by federating is to consume or squash Mastadon before it becomes noticeable competition, because they know people will eventually grow tired of the corporate bullshit they plan to pull with Threads. They don’t want people to have growing options. They’ll join the party with 100s, maybe 1000s of times more active users than Mastadon, and it won’t take long at all before they’re fully driving the ship. If there’s any attention brought to the fediverse, it will be because a massive corporation has arrived to “fix” it.
Right now, Mastadon is growing because of Twitter’s spiral, the same way Lemmy is beginning to grow because of Reddit’s. Threads has the outright goal of growing off Twitter’s failures, but they won’t do it passively like Mastadon. They’re going to be aggressive and brutal.
Have people forgotten how disgusting Meta is? Don’t expect anything good to come from dealing with them. Folks should want to join these platforms because they believe in open source and decentralization. Corporate social media has their own problems for a reason. I’d have hoped people wouldn’t want them to spread that cancer here. This is supposed to be the escape from all that.
As much as I hate Meta, nothing is worse than Twitter under Musk. I’m hoping it does kill twitter… Doesn’t take much to end twitter right now tbh.
Unfortunately, Mastodon’s lack of features makes it hard for normies to use and it will not see mainstream adoption. I hope normies get a decent Twitter replacement.
There’s no need for a “Twitter killer” Twitter is already dying. And the last thing anyone should think is a good idea is thinking something made by meta is a good idea to switch too.
Twitter is the Twitter killer
