Meta/Instagram launched a new product called Threads today (working title project92). It adds a new interface for creating text posts and replying to them, using your Instagram account. Of note, Meta has stated that Threads plans to support ActivityPub in the future, and allow federation with ActivityPub services. If you actually look at your Threads profile page in the app your username has a threads.net tag next to it - presumably to support future federation.

Per the link, a number of fediverse communities are pledging to block any Meta-directed instances that should exist in the future. Thus instance content would not be federated to Meta instances, and Meta users would not be able to interact with instance content.

I’m curious what the opinions on this here are. I personally feel like Meta has shown time and time again that they are not very good citizens of the Internet; beyond concerns of an Eternal September triggered by federated Instagram, I worry that bringing their massive userbase to the fediverse would allow them to influence it to negative effect.
I also understand how that could be seen to go against the point of federated social media in the first place, and I’m eager to hear more opinions. What do you think?

  • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’ll put it this way:

    • on the one hand, there’s React.
    • on the other hand, there’s React.

    Or, to translate for those of us who don’t speak “asshole”:

    • Facebook has contributed to open source, they’ve created one of the most popular javascript frameworks around: React, or ReactJS. This is software made by Facebook, possibly even still maintained by Facebook, which you can use in your site today for free (and no, it doesn’t make your site look like facebook).
    • On the other hand, React became its own monster, with some people misunderstanding it as the end-all-be-all framework. Also, it’s nice but it’s a lot and arguably better frameworks now exist. My point was that the company carried more weight on this project than maybe it should have.

    There are good arguments for blocking Facebook as a whole on the web, such as cookie tracking. I don’t like Facebook, but I guess I would consider any people who have made the jump to federated platforms as potentially missing out on interacting with their forever-facebooked-friends. Seriously, why can’t people just try another thing alongside Facebook? Why do they have to be ride or die facebook-fiends? I digress…

    • seafoam_green@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think the comparison to react makes a ton of sense - Facebook created react as an open source project, but once you download react, you have a copy of it for yourself and you don’t need to check in with Facebook any further. They don’t own your react app or its data.

      I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like threads will not be like that: they will be using an open standard that they did not create for a social network that will track you and gather your data every time you use it.

      (I am for defederation)