Meta's Threads twitter competitor is now live... what do you think?
i know the fediverse has been pretty split and a lot of big instances (mainly microblogging and mastodon-like softwares, but some lemmy instances are defederating meta too) but what do you think?
It's Eembrace, extend, and extinguish
(EEE) all over again. It has happen countless times, and will keep happening. I can't believe people still fall for it.
Meta wants to capture the twitter refugees, and they will do the same thing.
Once I followed people and accounts I wanted to see, their feeds automatically took over. What you saw was Meta filling the feed with something so average users don't see an empty void and give up.
I've taken a look around and it's pretty early so not a lot of uptake. It will live or die by how many people actively use it. The built in follower base with instagram is pretty enticing. I was surprised to see a reference to the fediverse right up front. Might just be pandering, but we will see!
Obviously I don't think anyone here cares for it, but most are worried on how it'll affect the fedi
Most of the fear is unfounded and it's a good thing for the overall fedi network
You can see Mastodon's CEO response on it, and I definitely agree with him. It's a good run down on the controversy, also mentioning embrace-extend-extinguish.
Yeah a whole lot of nothing new from that post. The mention of XMPP is mentioned in Mastodon's post already, and it really is an irrelevant protocol barely having users in 2006. That landscape isn't remotely the same as it is today. When you say let's talk on XMPP, what does that even mean? What app? What website? If I say let's chat over ActivityPub, I could point you to Mastodon or whatever. They're user facing, they're established, they're easy to use for normal people. It's modern day and we can clone a git repo of ActivityPub like it's nothing. People are well aware of extend-embrace-extinguish. The comparison really baffles me.
Frankly I think those admins are dumb for refusing to talk to Meta so they could give them their perspective of the fedi. That was Meta actually attempting to have positive communication and was shot down.
None of the comparisons in that post that are brought up are even remotely comparable to me. They are all entirely different circumstances, like trying to compare a essential tool like document rendering to an independent social network protocol?? You need that document rendering for work, you can't do your job otherwise. Mastodon can tell them to fuck off and remain on an unchanged ActivityPub with zero loss. These comparisons are not the same.
I think they’ll do quite well, it’s a perfect landing spot for Twitter refugees not willing/techie enough to take the leap to Mastodon. Y’know, the normals. Particularly if it’s well-integrated with Instagram.
Is that a good thing? Ie do I want to see Twitter fail more than I want Meta to not be successful…? That’s a fucking tricky one!
The lack of ‘only people you follow’ tab is a huge over sight, that’s the thing I use the most because I’m rarely interested in any app’s recommendations.
This was a rushed launch to capitalize on the latest Twitter shit show and the home timeline wasn't done yet.
They didn't want people to log into Threads and see nothing if none of their other follows have activated yet, so instead they force you to see everything so you don't run out of content and disengage.
Once I followed people and accounts I wanted to see, their feeds automatically took over. What you saw was Meta filling the feed with something so average users don’t see an empty void and give up.
A friend who signed up at the same time was seeing my activity too. If I responded to someone, he could see it and join in the conversation, and vice versa. I actually didn't how Threads took this route. I personally found it more appealing than Twitter and Mastodon when I first signed up and had nothing but an empty feed and had to go find everyone.
I think that if Apple let me install it in a walled off sandbox, away from everything else on my phone, I might give it a try, but as it is, it's not going on my phone.
I'm all for it if gathers up a whole bunch of basic/casual internet users and keeps them in the shallow end of the pool.
People are worried about it being an E/E/E manoeuvre but I see it as a plus happening this early - a great scenario to test and observe how federation (and defederation) works in practice and gives the whole ecosystem some experience in dealing with potentially hostile actors.
So far though, worst case is if threads turns out to be a real blight on the fediverse, then major instances with defederate them and that will be the end of it.
If it's just another server that I can choose to follow or not, whatever, doesn't bother me. Anything that will make the fediverse better, faster is ok imo.
That being said, I do not, nor will ever trust Facebook
I can't tell if Bluesky is any better. I mean, morally. I'm unsure myself. I'm on the waiting list for Bluesky.
There are a lot of news items about Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk still being friends and helping each other out, even to this day. I'm still trying to filter my findings to learn what is fact or fiction.
But there is a chance if one doesn't like Threads because it is owned by Meta, then using Bluesky may be a hypocritical choice. Not sure yet.