The head of Instagram apparently says it’ll be possible to migrate accounts from Threads, retaining at least that part of the ActivityPub protocol.
Meta plans to eventually hook Threads into ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol that also powers Mastodon. That integration isn’t ready at launch, though, as I previously reported. When it’s enabled, Threads users will be able to interact with Mastodon users and take their accounts with them to other clients that support the ActivityPub standard. As Mosseri puts it, this is a move designed to appease creators who have grown increasingly wary of relying on the whims of centralized social media companies. “I think we might be a more compelling platform for creators, particularly for the newer creators who are more and more savvy, if we are a place where you don’t have to feel like you have to trust us forever,” he says.
If true, it seems like a positive development. This is a Mastodon (and Calckey and Misskey and everyone else, of course) account tool that I thought there was no way they’d allow.
It makes me sick to see all the FediEvangelist influencers embracing Meta’s play. Some are out there making content about it in a positive way after having “seen” it. Let’s recall that Meta previously required some people involved with Lemmy to sign NDAs. So how are these folks talking about it in a positive light?
Let me spoil Meta’s plan here. They know their market is dying. They are going to launch on Fediverse and move big names to Threads in order to draw others in.
But do you really think Meta is going to federate with most of the community? Fuck no. They are going to form some weird trusted partner platform thing just like they do elsewhere. If Threads takes off I definitely see them walling that garden off. Sure, they will suck up all that public user data from you and I. They will federate their ads disguised as posts, and allow the deep reach of psy op and bot networks into the fediverse just like they do in traditional social media.
But that’s the end game. People drawing comparisons to Embrace Extend Extinguish are correct. It doesn’t matter if Fediverse/ActivityPub is open. Microsoft used it against open source software as well. It is about the larger coordinated vision that a million tiny independent groups can’t effectively fight.
It won’t matter if you can move your account to a different platform or defederate from Threads after it grows. They will lock all the main draws into their walled garden and adopt the buzz words. Meta will become ActivityPub as it were, as they will have the largest reach. If we allow Threads to be successful.
I implore everyone: do not federate with bad faith actors like Meta or other traditional social media platforms. As Fediverse thrives we will increasingly come under attack just like years past via subversion campaigns.
And they will use trusted people in our community to deceive us. Like they always do.
Edit: not to mention the detrimental knock on effects Threads could have with communities in other ways. For example, do people earnestly believe that these independent communities will be widely funded by users to keep them independent and ad free? Meta is going to suck all the air out of the room. If we let them.
We just came off the significant bad aspects of private capital owning and operating our social media. And people seriously want to run back into those arms? Hello, this is Meta: they ran psy ops to depress children just to see if they could do it without regard for self harm, suicide rates, or other long term effects.