Threads fediverse support is going to be rolling out in stages over the next year. First read-only, then with likes and shares, then replies, then two-way follow.
They are mostly concerned about privacy for Threads users, so they won't be federating in ways that put that privacy at risk.
@joemcl@J12t Yes. I think there was a clear answer that the business model would be ad-supported and that any ads would be shown to Threads users only.
@joemcl@J12t Also, as far as I could tell, the most important use case for them is that a creator could move from Threads to their own server, even if they get de-platformed. I think the major motivator here is Mark Zuckerberg having to go testify in front of Congress twice a year or whatever, and getting grilled by conservative Congresspeople about de-platforming. Being able to say, you can get kicked off Threads but keep your followers, is a big win in this situation.
Huh. Still not sure how a followers list can be pulled from one server to another, I haven't tried moving across various Fediverse instances. Will have to check that out. That would definitely be a departure for Meta/ Facebook.
@joemcl@evan@J12t I've migrated four times, the last time I had 10K followers. I find that a very tiny proportion seem to get lost, but basically it just works.
@tess@joemcl@J12t I think the big question for Threads and standards is how they can participate without taking over. It's going to be a delicate balance.
This is what I mean: we should move the de facto standard Mastodon, Firefish and a couple others use for migration of account/followers/following/liats/bookmarks and make that a true ActivityPub standard — then work on standardization of post migration on top of that.
@tchambers@timbray@evan@joemcl@J12t I don’t think post migration would or should work. Tim wrote a blog post about this, which I tend to agree with.
Post migration could only work if each post/object has an ID unique across the Fediverse, which is where Bluesky landed with the AT Protocol, and it’s how they support decoupling profiles/data from the services.
@evan Have they considered doing it in smaller stages with subsets of users, for example only users in a certain language or geography? That would also allow to pay closer attention to the most affected federated instances, instead of having to observe effects scattered everywhere all at once.
@nemobis OK. So your idea is that they would enable federation for Australian Threads users, for example, and then measure how many reports they get from those Threads users about harassment and abuse from the fediverse? And then use that information to decide whether to federate further?
@tchambers@ramsey@timbray@evan@joemcl@J12t@kainoa Firefish does have it. And @Sharkey, a misskey fork, recently added Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter imports as well. There are limits…no replies, likes, boosts are included. Not federated on import.