A lot of people are on the Fediverse to escape these corporate data-hoarder apps. It’s so weird to still see people embracing the abusers. It’s like we’ve learned nothing.
Because they want the content that only a huge platform can provide.
You don’t. That’s fine. The beauty of the Fediverse is you can choose an instance whose policies you like. You do not have to demand that everyone else has exactly the same preferences as you do.
This story is such a huge nothingburger. You can put rel=“me” in the meta tags for your Threads account. Whoopty freakin’ doo.
I get it. Meta sucks. It really does.
But the reactions here only prove that most of the people carrying pitchforks don’t actually know what it is they’re against, aside from “Zuckerberg lizardman bad”.
While I’m sure Threads as a whole is an attempt at EEE, I don’t think this is that big a deal. In fact, I’d like to see every other site support it, too
As the article mentions, verification on Mastodon is just verifying ownership of some links in your profile (not the entire account), which just checks the target site for a special link back to your profile (specifically adding the rel=“me” attribute to it). Now when you add a link to your Threads profile, if it sees a rel=me link pointing back your Threads profile, it will add the rel=me on its end as well. Following the steps in the article, Mastodon will then see the rel=me attribute on the link to your profile there, and show the link as verified, just the same as if it saw any other rel=me link on any other site. And any other site that supports link verification the same way will also now be able to verify ownership of your Threads profile.
Using rel=me links like this is a great simple way to cross-verify all your other accounts and websites without needing to sign in or authorize any access. Just point the two sites at each other and violà!
This is the first and second step in the EEE cycle. They are embracing Mastodon by allowing instances to connect to theirs, and they are extending it by providing a verification service for all Mastodon users - a service which is conveniently dependent on Meta as a centralized authority. Eventually every celebrity will rely on Meta to get verified and Meta will use this to extinguish independent Mastodon instances.
This isn’t connecting to ActivityPub any more than putting “rel=‘me’” in the head of an old Blogger blog is.
I guess the real question is this is “why?”. If they’re truly planning on federating, this is the equivalent of having your mastodon.social account show up as “verified” on your mastodon.world alt account.
This isn’t entirely true. Verification on Mastodon isn’t verifying your account for a shiny badge, it’s verifying ownership of sites that you link on your profile. If you add a link to a website, and that website links back to your profile, Mastodon will show that one link as verified. But that link needs a special rel=“me” attribute to count for verification, which is what Threads now supports.
I am absolutely sure Threads is an attempt at EEE, but this specific feature is a good thing imo. I’d love to see more sites support rel=me links for simple cross-platform account (ownership) verification
I am one of those people who migrated, and I don’t want to be part of any other social media plattform that is run by megacorps. (haven’t found a good content rich alternative to youtube though)
I don’t know how futile this battle is, as it’s undeniable that content are still made on platforms hosted my those megacorps. For now I start with privacy friendly frontends. Libreddit for the reddit stuff and piped for youtube.
It kinda sucks that those megacorps lured the people/youth in with a prospect of fame and money to produce content for them. Turning what was once a creative pasttime into a tedious job.
To own my own data and feed and have some control over what’s pushed at me?
I mean, I get it. Some people hate X and Meta. I hate them too. But if my aim was to get away from those two, I’d be on Tumblr, not Mastodon. If I was concerned that my postings to “social media” can be abused, I wouldn’t use Mastodon either, it’s completely open and there’s very little concept of privacy.
To put it bluntly, Meta doesn’t even need to join the Mastoverse with an ActivityPub instance to vacuum up your Mastoverse data. It just needs single accounts to join the big instances and follow the “Federated feed” on them, doing a little algorithmic work to link accounts to Facebook accounts. It’s actually easier for Meta to suck your data from the Mastoverse than it was Twitter or Tumblr. (I deadnamed X, because I assume X’s position is so dire that if Meta offered to pay for everyone’s feeds, Musk would sell it all. But Twitter, for all of its faults, wouldn’t have done that.)
What I’m hoping is that Meta will follow through and join properly, offering ActivityPub feeds and the ability to subscribe to ActivityPub feeds. Doing so will give Meta’s own users an off ramp, making it easier for Meta’s users to feel able to leave without losing their circle. And it’ll give the morons who insist that “OMG MASTODON IS TOO HARD YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE A SERVER!” (I can’t be polite about these people any more, the number who brag about their own idiocy is astonishing) a “simple” social network they can join with that off-ramp available for the future.
But no, in my case, I didn’t join Mastodon to get away from Meta. I joined so I have the network I want.
Dammit, I thought I'd fully flushed the quantum improbability matrix. Must be those damn infinite beer taps Tennant put in again. I mean, who the hell installs a kegerator on top of a mutliversic server? Last time I buy a used Tardis - this goddamn thing can't even make it through a decade without spewing wormholes. I am sooo goddamn sick of rounding up stray Daleks.
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