#Threads won’t support Activitypub or the Fediverse at launch, but it’s apparently still coming.
“We’re committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but it’s coming”
Also there’s one great feature #Threads is shipping with that #Mastodon doesn’t yet have: control who replies to your posts.
“Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted that users will be able to decide who can reply to posts — everyone, profiles they follow, or mentioned accounts in the post.”
@Brendanjones It'll be fun trying to implement that on #Meta's end, I don't think #Mastodon, #rebased, or compatible software is likely to comply, so non #Meta users will be able to respond to all #Threads posts lol
@realcaseyrollins Indeed, and that may be one reason why they're delaying federation. Won't be a fun experience for their users if they set limited replies and then get replies anyway.
@Brendanjones An easy solution would be for their software to just hide responses to posts people shouldn't be able to respond to tho...that doesn't sound hard to do, but I'm not the one doing the work lol
@Brendanjones There may be a reason Mastodon et al don't have this feature: it can't be enforced on the rest of the #fediverse.
Suppose Alice is on Threads and she locks down replies to profiles she follows. Now, imagine Bob is on Mastodon and Alice follows him. Now Bob can reply, and Alice can see his replies.
Now suppose Bob boosts one of Alice's posts. Now everyone who follows Bob can see Alice's post, and because they're not on Threads, they can also reply.
Alice will never see these replies, of course, because her instance hides them from her (or maybe doesn't even download them I dunno).
Point being... this feature doesn't actually extend ActivityPub. It's purely a client-side UI/UX feature.
@notroot as per the latest comments in the issue I linked, the changes will be made at the ActivityPub level. That's why it's taking a while to implement, because it's not just a Mastodon thing.
@Brendanjones Interesting. Protocol-level support would definitely make it feasable! It would still be on the server software (Mastodon, Calckey, etc.) to implement it, and of course that could be hacked. But that's true, anyway, since nobody is forced to implement all of AP.
I think my point still stands though... until that feature is added to AP, and implemented in Mastdon et al, it will be an instance-only feature of Threads that they implement on their side. The rest of us will still be playing by the old rules.
@corpsmoderne True, but on the other hand this feature is already desired on the Fediverse (it's on the Mastodon roadmap), so we're not being extended in any way we don't want to be. Maybe Threads having the feature will put some fire under the butts of everyone here to make it happen, which ain't a bad thing. So long as we make sure that Meta don't shape the process ...
@Brendanjones
This is a bad idea imo. Anyone should be able to reply to any public post, if you don't want that then just make a followers only one. I installed Misskey on here and if they ever implement this I will manually patch it out on here. This would just encourage echo chambers and para social relationships, at least in my view.
Add comment