Threads is adding fediverse content to your social feeds

Guess all those blocks had a reason after all.

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?

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.

Nahhh, Meta sucks ass and will screw you over in a heartbeat. What's in it for them is the question.
- 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.
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.
- Tumblr also downsized to 25 employees (including T&S). I don't expect anything groudbreaking from them soon.
- Got it, very interesting! I look forward to it being worked out soon, Wordpress federation is awesome.

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).

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.

Ewww

Shit.

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

EEE, sorry.
- The most they can do is add a load of more users to the fediverse then take them away again. For them to successfully EEE the fediverse, it would require convincing existing fediverse users to switch to threads. I cannot see that happening on here on any noticeable scale.
  If anything, Bluesky is the bigger threat as it touts itself as "decentralised" in order to gain users who would have otherwise gone to Mastodon, then easily pull the plug.
- 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.
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!"
- Its a bit charitable to call threads a monopoly since no one uses it.

so?

Honestly

Should I feel grubby?