When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse “soon”.
But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta’s saying ActivityPub integration’s “a long way out”. Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!
From the perspective of the “free fediverse” that’s not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is “a long way out” is encouraging. OK, it’s not as good as “when hell freezes over,” but it’s a heckuva lot better than “soon.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say “a long way out” is a clear victory for the free fediverse’s cause.
hi, anti-Meta person here: it’s not about how many users we have. it’s about Meta’s long track record of insufficient moderation and harvesting of personal data. thanks to their almost nonexistent moderation, they’ve facilitated genocides, let deadly disinformation spread unchecked, and contributed to the rise of fascism. and they harvest enough data from their platforms to create digital duplicates of us, and if they join the Fediverse, of course they’re going to harvest data from anyone federating with them too.
would you trust them to play nice in the Fediverse after all they’ve done?
From the Mastodon blog post about Meta federation:
Will Meta get my data or be able to track me?
Mastodon does not broadcast private data like e-mail or IP address outside of the server your account is hosted on. Our software is built on the reasonable assumption that third party servers cannot be trusted. For example, we cache and reprocess images and videos for you to view, so that the originating server cannot get your IP address, browser name, or time of access. A server you are not signed up with and logged into cannot get your private data or track you across the web. What it can get are your public profile and public posts, which are publicly accessible.
That just shows how little Eugen understands the privacy risks. Why just blocking Meta’s Threads won’t be enough to protect your privacy once they join the fediverse has an example of how federating with Meta can expose private data. And, data can be public but hard to discover (a profile for somebody who only makes followers-only and local-only posts); federating with Threads adds exposure.
If they really wanted to they could already do that by setting up an instance and not publicly announcing it.
I just want to make this clear I’m also anti-meta and that’s why I want them to feel a need to open up for users to make it easier to switch platforms.
I would trust them as much as any other new instance of any other platform that joins the Fendiverse. That’s my point.