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

  • originalucifer
    5•10 months ago

    they 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!

    • @[email protected]English
      14•10 months ago

      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)

      • originalucifer
        4•10 months ago

        i didnt know they could unilaterally change AP for everyone. who let them have that right?

          • originalucifer
            3•10 months ago

            that is one of my only actual concerns. he who controls the protocol, controls the 'verse.

            • @[email protected]English
              7•10 months ago

              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.

              • originalucifer
                2•10 months ago

                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.

                • @[email protected]English
                  3•10 months ago

                  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.

                  • FaceDeer
                    2•10 months ago

                    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.

                  • originalucifer
                    1•10 months ago

                    so youve confirmed that i have nothing to fear from this. thank you

                    i will be calling this the ‘feature envy’ argument henceforth

                • sour
                  1•10 months ago

                  for profit company that enabled genocide is problem

                  • originalucifer
                    0•10 months ago

                    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.

          • originalucifer
            -1•10 months ago

            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?