A few thoughts on Threads joining the Fediverse
It actually happened. Meta’s social networking app Threads joined the Fediverse! And I have a few thoughts.
- This is a big deal. For the first time in history, you can not have an account on a Meta-owned app but still be able to follow and soon interact with many people on there. Meta’s phased approach of federating compatible features as well as accounts seems pretty good. Other than avoiding sudden wide-scale wreckages and confusion with a novel system, this approach should also help alleviate some of the concerns people in the Fediverse have been expressing—things like Big Fedi versus Small Fedi, Nodes versus Networked Communities, and the Fedipact—by allowing them to gradually take on these challenges.
- Having said that, if you read replies to the official posts about the news, on the profiles of Threads, app-head Adam Mosseri, and Meta dictator Mark Zuckerberg, it should become revealingly clear to techies in Fediverse bubbles that people do not understand the concept of interoperable social networks or why they would want one. Some even fear it because of misunderstanding it. There’s much work to do here.
- With Threads being very much a Twitter-and-Meta-like network though, in terms of its engineered exploitations and addictions of our humans selves, the Fediverse will now only become noisier still. As such, I continue to find browsing Threads and other such social networks to be pointless, other than manually checking posts or profiles of interest only when needed or surfaced organically within things I read. So yeah, do not follow me on Threads.
- There are only two reasons I want to log into Threads: to turn on federation when it becomes available in India, and then to move my followers to my singular, minimal Fediverse presence when Threads enables the same at a (presumably) much later point. Though, Manton Reece highlights challenges for people wanting to do that as well. Sighs.