A developer of Meta's short message service Threads demonstrated how the planned connection to Fediverse and services such as Mastodon should work. In a demonstration on the FediForum that was only a few minutes long, Peter Cottle first showed what users of threads will have to click on in the future in order to connect their accounts to Fediverse.
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The process therefore consists of a longer explanation – because most of the 130 million people active on threads would not even know what it is all about – and several clues. Cottle explains that it is currently not possible to ensure that deleted posts also disappear from all other servers. In addition, you cannot yet see replies from Mastodon and other services in threads, but they are working very hard on this.
Once the connection has been established, it is made visible on Threads that the account is part of the decentralized Fediverse. According to Cottle, posts published after that are held back for five minutes before they end up in Fediverse. This should provide enough time for any post-processing. On top of that, Threads already supports the so-called “Quote Posts”, i.e. posts in which others are quoted and appear directly below them. These are known from X/Twitter, Mastodon as the largest part of the Fediverse cannot yet do this. But they should also be introduced there. Cottle assures that Threads is aware of the skepticism that is being met with the planned connection in Fediverse. But he appealed to everyone to believe him, that they really only have good intentions and want to become a good member of the community. Thread users should have the opportunity to get to know Fediverse.
Threads by Meta is one of several Twitter alternatives that are intended to benefit from the chaos of the great role model and the departure of many users. With well over 100 million active users per month, Threads is by far the most successful, Mastodon and Bluesky have much less. Threads announced months ago that it would be connected to Fediverse – to which Mastodon belongs.
The first accounts on threads that you can follow from Mastodon & Co. have been around since December. While initially this was only done by Meta employees, there is now an extended beta test. In this context, you can now also follow Evan Prodromou's threads account from Mastodon. He is one of the co-authors of the Activity Pub protocol, which forms the basis of Fediverse. Threads will be opened further over the course of the year.
Individually agree to the connection to Fediverse
The fact that Meta places an “opt-in” before connecting to Fediverse, unlike what is usual there, is definitely the data protection-friendly option. But Meta won't choose her because of that. After all, content from threads is already displayed on Instagram and Facebook. It has only recently become possible to object to this via “opt-out”. Instead, Meta's approach to Fediverse ensures that at most small holes are created in the wall around the “walled garden” threads.
For those who prefer Fediverse but want to interact with threads, this becomes significantly less attractive. In the event of a possible excerpt from threads, all those followers who have not checked the box will also be lost. However, the approach should allay some fears on Mastodon, for example, which were concerned that the huge thread could simply swallow the Fediverse.
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