What Meta’s Fediverse Plans Mean for Threads Users
What Meta’s Fediverse Plans Mean for Threads Users
We spoke with a product manager at Meta to learn how the company plans to bring interoperability to Threads in the coming months. It faces both technical and cultural challenges.
Meta is treading carefully, doing a phased implementation while continuing conversations with Fediverse leaders. This will give the company more time to iron out some of the integration kinks. “Do we adapt the protocol to be able to support this?” Lambert asks. “Or do we try to do some kind of interesting, unique implementation?” For example, Threads supports audio posts, a feature not currently supported within ActivityPub, so Meta is experimenting with “federating” a text transcription of the original post instead of the audio version.
It was never a good idea federating with Threads
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For example, Threads supports audio posts, a feature not currently supported within ActivityPub, so Meta is experimenting with “federating” a text transcription of the original post instead of the audio version.
Here we go
Embrace Extend Extinguish
^ we are herethey modified AP already? wow that was quick. i was under this crazy impression they were using text in a field designed for text. silly me!
No the next step is saying that text transcription didn't worked like they wanted so we need to change the AP to allow what the majority wants(spoiler: they are the majority)
i didnt know they could unilaterally change AP for everyone. who let them have that right?
I'm just joking, I don't think they can make a change unilaterally easily.
that is one of my only actual concerns. he who controls the protocol, controls the 'verse.
It's far worse. They're making improvements only on their side. The protocol everyone uses will lack the features their protocol offers. In other words, their side of the garden is now greener than ours, and one day, their side will be so majestic and beautiful compared to ours that almost nobody will want to visit it anymore, and like a flame without fuel, the Fediverse will Extinguish on its own.
Ha.. no.
As I said before, their instance and it's bells and whistles are irrelevant to my instance. Me and my instance only care about The ap protocol. I have no reason to fear their instance as long as it's pumping out the standard protocol. Anything not standard gets dropped.
Zero problem here.
Oh, be assured that threads will one day defederate and build a wall so you can't access their content anymore. The Fediverse need to have a critical mass of users to survive when it happens, but if the features threads offers are too compelling and the majority of the new accounts are made in there then the Fediverse is screwed.
Oh, be assured that threads will one day defederate and build a wall so you can’t access their content anymore.
Isn't that already the case? The Fediverse is doing fine under current circumstances.
so youve confirmed that i have nothing to fear from this. thank you
i will be calling this the 'feature envy' argument henceforth
for profit company that enabled genocide is problem
ahh i see the 'non-technical, moral' argument. i can appreciate this one. take a stand, you do you!
im going to do me.
i dont go out of my way to block instances just because i hate the companies. im focusing on interoperability concerns.
im glad we can agree, theres no technical concern with threads federation.
You can have a look at this article
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Long story short, Google killed XMPP back in the days by federating with it, then added some non standard features, got most of the user base to migrate to Google chat, then defederated.
right this is the 'feature envy' argument
ha a blog post, ok. even the blog post admits it
While XMPP still exist and is a very active community
every instance of xmpp folded to google because it "got most of user base to migrate"
if the fediverse cant actually compete content and feature wise across 10s of thousands of very different services/experiences built on AP, (unlike XMPP), we deserve to die.
the world is a different place than it was . how many people do you know use gtalk? zero? its zero. xmpp? STILL A THING YOU CAN USE. google didnt kill shit. the market at the time seriously minimized its use, cuz everyone was lazy and not running their own server-server products.
back today.
do you have any evidence of Meta modifying the AP protocol? can you point at their actual ability to modify the protocol? can you tell me how an instance that drops all nonstandard AP traffic is going to suffer from Meta attempting it?
we deserve to die.
To be fair, maybe we are not even that alive to begin with.
You can attach an audio file to a post on mastodon and it gets an embedded player. Just federate a compatible audio file?
i dont get the fear here. if they are putting text into a field designed for text, thats somehow an extension of AP?