When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse “soon”.
But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta’s saying ActivityPub integration’s “a long way out”. Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!
From the perspective of the “free fediverse” that’s not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is “a long way out” is encouraging. OK, it’s not as good as “when hell freezes over,” but it’s a heckuva lot better than “soon.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say “a long way out” is a clear victory for the free fediverse’s cause.
A month isn’t very long, they haven’t even figured out their basic features - this was more a “maybe later this year” timeframe. It could be done quickly if they decided to start by reproducing mastodon and going from there, but building something that federates but is highly monetizable takes time - honestly they were probably pleased by the numbers and decided to go for monetization first
Making it clear they are unwelcome was the point though.
It seems they’ve put the idea on the back burner after we largely made our position clear, but it’s not unlikely that they try to quietly federate down the road… Every time they think about it, we have to make them believe this would be more trouble than it’s worth
I personally believe that Meta never intended Threads to be support Activitypub and just chose it so they could do the bare minimum to comply with the EU digital markets act.
Given how evil they are, this definitely seems plausible (although threats isn’t available in the EU and they are actively preventing usage in the EU). Another option is that they’re still out to kill the fediverse. That one honestly seems more likely to me, given how they’ve acted in the past (buying up platforms before they could outcompete them).
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I mean, this is my area of expertise. Sure, it’s speculation, but it’s educated speculation. I’m intimately familiar with activity pub and the way large projects are brought into existence
Plus, following my recommendation if I’m wrong would at most be a slight amount of wasted effort, but ignoring it if I’m right could be a huge problem.
I’d call that helpful