It’s high time for the Fediverse
Yes, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the past seven days at Threads. There were few bots, but there was a lively exchange and many factual discussions about meta, threads and Fediverse.
I’m not the first to make this comparison, but it felt like Twitter 2007 – something new. Felt, i.e. past tense, because Meta now completely blocks users from the EU. Or at least half. Because we’re still allowed to watch, but no longer participate.
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To put it mildly, this is a very unfortunate move by Meta, after all you could install Android Threads from the EU with a simple APK file and use it without any problems. Now it feels like being held hostage in a battle Meta wants to fight with EU regulators before they even finalize any regulations. Although the EU’s Digital Markets Act was passed last year, it is not expected to fully come into force until next year.
On our own behalf: Currently, many people are looking for a Twitter alternative. t3n is also on Mastodon below https://t3n.social/@t3n active.
Before people write straight back into the comments: “But the bad meta and your data! And it’s good that the EU cares so much about our data!” I’m well aware that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are no saints and I’m critical of both and what they do. For example, Meta could have launched threads worldwide in compliance with data protection regulations – if they had only wanted to. But they don’t. And the connection to the Fediverse has only been promised so far, not kept.
One of the most exciting aspects of threads for me was and is precisely this connection to the Fediverse and the associated decentralization. And it is precisely the decentralized aspect of it that is so central to the problem. Now a big player again, namely Meta, determines whether and how we are allowed to access a social network. They are not unlike Elon Musk on Twitter. If Acitvity-Pub, the protocol behind the Fediverse, were already part of threads, you could still access and participate in it via an instance at Mastodon, for example. Even with significantly better data protection.
It remains to be hoped that the activity pub will finally become the standard for social networks. With 130 million accounts already, Threads could have been exactly this breakthrough, as could Eugen Rochko, the Mastodon inventor and CEO, all in one blog post writes.
However, my guess is: the integration of activity pub with threads will only come when the network is officially accessible in the EU. So not before 2024. Until then, you’ll find me back at Mastodon.
