Mastodon's official stance on Threads

It's all fun and games until Facebook starts adding features, then eventually starts defining what the fediverse should do to maintain federation with Facebook.

XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

Jabber was widely used in the early 2000s and not just among "nerds." But Rochko would have only been 7+ years old at the time so how would he know that.

The "brand recognition of Mastodon" part makes me think this has to be a joke... right?

XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

I love Mastodon and the Fediverse, but to pretend that we are not a nerd circle is a bit disingenuous.

This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.

For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.

Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.

Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.

It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.

The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.

Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.

There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.

I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.

So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.

And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.

Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.

So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?

Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?

It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.

Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.

Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.

@remindme@mstdn.social in 2 years.

For me, I don't need new fancy features to communicate. I don't need video chat rooms. I don't need constant notifications. I just need a simple place to post my social expressions and read other people's social expressions. I don't want my experience to be shaped by algorithms designed to keep me engaged and present. For me, social media is like going down to the pub and talking with some regular friends. The BIGGER a platform is, the less it's about being social, and it's more about promotion. Promotion of self, events, clubs, companies, etc.

Threads will take away people from Mastodon, but that's a good thing. Because it will appeal to people who desire a different social media experience. They can take the foam off the top, leaving us with a smaller group that prefers a simpler, less invasive, social media. I don't have to share all my contacts, my browsing history, my health data or my financial data to Mastodon (or any service in the Fediverse) in order to use it. You cannot say the same about Thread.

I will always side with something like Mastodon over Thread. That doesn't mean I don't believe Mastodon cannot fail. It certainly can. But it won't be Thread that kills it.

Can someone explain to me why people are so violently opposed to this?

If Threads blows up, and ActivityPub is integrated, you'll have access to all of it through any federated instance. No need to let Meta sap all your data to view it or communicate with it's users. Meta can't kill ActivityPub or force us onto Threads, just abandon it and leave us back where we are today. If you don't like the Meta users, just make or join an instance that isn't federated.

Anyone can scrape the metaverse data and use it for whatever, Meta included. Them implementing ActivityPub doesn't change anything about that.

Look I don't like Meta as much as the next guy, but this all just seems like illogical gatekeeping

Edit: I understand now, see: XMPP and Google. Good article someone replied to me with, down below.

don't know about you folks but this sounded so arrogant to me:

There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

What we know

Threads is a separate app from Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. This means Threads’ user base will be separate from their existing platforms.

Well that aged like milk…

FOSS is the ultimate form of software. It's like life, it will just get copied and forked and modified, and it will continue to evolve because it's been set free in the world.

Yeah, Facebook might embrace-extend-extinguish the Fediverse. But on the other hand, it's not the end of the world if they do. Right now, we have a decentralized platform to post, talk and interact on. If that changes, we will create another one

To me, the most interesting part about this is that the Fediverse is even on Facebook's Meta's radar. It's tiny. Do they see it as a possible competitor?

Defederate. Meta would do nothing but rot the fediverse from the inside

Meta needs to be split up at this point, as do many other tech companies.

This is why we can't have nice things. It was nice to be on platforms with no corporate stink for a brief moment.

Yeah, right.

tHeRe's No fUCkInG waY FaCEBooK wOULd EVER SUcKed Up aLL liFE FRom soMETHinG GOoD aNd tHEN LefT iT tO DiE WheN it'S nO LONgeR uSEfuL U guiZ!

I had heard, of course, that Rochko was in confidential talks with Facebook abiut something. This is disheartening. Facebook is toxic and must be kept out of the Fediverse.

Permanently Deleted

Remember what Google Groups did to Usenet? We should be wary.

That is so naive thinking I’m my opinion. They probably gonna use that in the long run to connect only their apps (like you can comment on Facebook from IG). Why would they want people outside of their ecosystems to connect with them? I deleted all their apps and I’m gonna do it with every Fediverse app that federate with them. I know that data in Fediverse is public but I wanted to join community-driven ecosystem outside of Meta.

Rochko has demonstrated to be either foolish or naive, and both are bad.

I'm not betting on him to having been bought, out of a minimum of trust, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.

Can someone ELI5 what this means for Lemmy, Mastadon, and other platforms that are federated?

I thought the point of federations was to allow server instances the ability to prevent other instances from interacting with one another?

Couldnt servers just block or prevent Threads from interacting with them?

Just reading this? I don't understand how this truly changes anything at all. Why is everyone concerned? The API isn't owned by Zuck but open for usage.

I can see the argument that Meta wants to kill the fediverse but I am kinda excited that we could possibly still get content from feeds that would not consider a mastodon account, even if that is a disagreeable attitude. Looking at Threads it already looks like brands "autosport, financial times" etc have setup regular posting schedules on threads so it really could be the Twitter killer.

Interesting times, we have Elon destroying the user base in twitter, sending users to the fediverse (add in reddit), whilst his mate Mark launches Threads and starts courting the fediverse. They're two billionaires. They both have the same vision. Monopolised control. One destroys whilst the other builds. They're in this together. Don't be so blind. De-federate!

We kept losing, and will keep losing, because billionaire megacorps simply have the money to move worlds if doing so aligns with their ‘interests’ (ie money). This hasn’t changed, and won’t change now either; the Fediverse is done for.

Fuck Facebook for ruining another good thing.

I'm a lot more optimistic (aka naive) than most it seems.

I'm really new to all this fediverse stuff, but I believe we can't lose what we already have, people that are here before Threads, will probably be here after Threads, since we already made that decision to leave reddit or twitter, to leave all that behind is a big social sacrifice.

My red line for Threads will be if they start to mess with the standards and the ActivityPub protocol, acting in bad faith.

Question if a server defederate from threads but is still federated with a server that federate with threads can meta get your data

@remindme@mstdn.social in 3 years

I agree with him completely, why are people so he'll bent on fear mongering this? The worst possible outcome is that the fedi will... be exactly the same as it is now lol.

Meta doesn't care about the Fedi population, they're not even 1% of their userbase, and they know that the fedi crowd is one of the most anti people of their network.

There is no embrace-extend-extinguish. If Meta starts to change up the ActivityPub protocol and then make it proprietary, then networks like Lemmy and Mastodon will just stay on the original one. They can't force the fedi to follow, and they know this.

They can't inject ads or data scrape more then they already can. Your public info is already public, which can be assumed that it can and is being scraped. This exact comment is one of them. They can scrape your info the exact same as they can now.

This will introduce more people to the concept of the fedi and they'll be more willing to migrate to other platforms like Mastodon/Lemmy when they understand the concept better. This is only a good thing for the population, and we won't lose any to the new network as stated before.

So at that point, what is a single downside of this? You can even just instance block them if you still dont like it, so it won't even affect you then.

I think this is reasonable.

I say we counter EEE with FFF: deFedereate, Forget, Fuck 'em.

Of course it's a shit product name that uses a generic commonly used term. :/

Da heck? Do we have a FB shill?

Honestly this is all secondary. I believe the main reason we aren't gonna defederate Threads and other big players when they join AP is that we just can't afford to.

How can anyone trust Facebook over this? I just don't understand.

LMAO, i didnt knew that its not in the eu already..... Oh wait the data privacy law is something here.

Threads will just straight up kill the fideverse. Ping me in a year or so!

Well I expected this once I heard he had signed the NDA and already stopped using Mastodon, though I might look for another instance which doesn‘t federate with Meta later on.

Whatever floats their boat I guess, while I appreciate the attempt at an answer of whether they will use EEE, I don‘t think it was a satisfying answer, cause specifically others this happened to before did not end up "the same", but worse, as users abandoned them after the bigger thing started introducing interoperability issues and features which made switching logical.

Any involvement with any meta property makes me start looking at that red X on my recurring donations menu. I have already decided that unless there is a solid confirmation of de-fedding threads by 30 July I will be cancelling all my recurring donations to the Open Source Collective until such time I'm satisfied history isn't repeating itself yet again.

Why are people mad at this? Being able to communicate with Threads users from mastodon servers, is good? Right?

Well, time to delete my mastadon account I guess. That was short lived. Glad I never got around to adding them to my patreon. (adding lemmy.world, mstdn.world, lemmy devs was on my list, possibly my new instance lemm.ee as well.)