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Federating with threads.net With the increasing use of ActivityPub by large web corporations like Meta, Mozilla, Automattic and others, an increasing number of third- parties are being exposed to our services, and our members are similarly exposed to these services. threads.net, an ActivityPub-enabled service from Meta’s Instagram platform (“Threads”), is a specific concern, as many users of ActivityPub do so expressly as a way to avoid using services from Meta. The question then becomes, to federate with the people on Threads who want to use the open web to communicate beyond the walls of Meta’s garden, or to defederate the entire service because the parent company has a history of terrible outcomes? The decision taken by the TWt Cymru team is to initially allow federation with threads.net, working toward a positive outcome where users of a monolithic service can now interact with people using different apps and platforms, while carefully monitoring the safety and privacy of our members. Having a walled garden like Meta use the open web is a desirable outcome, and advances the explicit aims of operating open web social network systems like toot.wales. As with any third- party server, the option to limit or suspend federation remains available.