““Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, such as @mosseri@threads.net.””
“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,” he said.
“If you’re wondering why this matters, here’s a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that.”
I can’t even interact on lemmy.world with my mastodon.world account. Is it really worth worrying about Thread accounts being able to interact here?
I have a feeling Thread is never going to bother with ActivityPub anyway. I suspect the threat was only ever a hedge in case Thread wasn’t as wildly successful on launch as it turned out to be.
I think it really depends how big the fediverse becomes. If it becomes popular enough that Meta are missing out on that rich, creamy data mining then you bet they'll do what ever they can to destroy other instances and the fediverse in general.
"“Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, such as @mosseri@threads.net.”"
“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,” he said.
“If you’re wondering why this matters, here’s a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that.”
I’ve seen the quote but not sure how it applies to what I said.
Just because they add ActivityPub support doesn’t mean it will work with Lemmy. That was why I gave the example of Mastodon.world not working with Lemmy.world.
And that quote was from before the launch which is what spurred the second part of my comment.
They provided little in the way of extra elaboration but that link explains a very good reason to be suspicious of corporations and hesitant to add them to any open platform. That directly speaks to your original question of why should you be concerned. I understand that the format of lemmy and threads aren't entirely compatible and if that's the case, then there is no need to federate with them as federation can only cause issues and provide no benefit.
That article is FUD. Apple hurt XMPP just as much by never joining it and offering a messaging system within their own ecosystem so folks had no reason to create a second account. XMPP would have been harmed by competition just as much if Google didn't join it. It was competition that killed it. Not that they had joined.
The article isn't FUD. FUD is a propaganda tactic. This is a recounting of events from the perspective of an insider. Just because it may give cause to have uncertainty or doubt or hell, even fear, doesn't mean it is a propaganda piece. And especially knowing how tech giants behave towards any and all competition this is really just a textbook retelling of one of the many events that fall into this same pattern.
Google wasn't competing with XMPP and XMPP would still be where it is today without Google's "interference." Google was losing chat market share to Apple and Blackberry. That's why it's history of chat applications is a mess. It kept throwing new stuff at the wall and hoping it stuck. They literally migrated to a new chat application again just a couple years ago.
Plus, it doesn't address this topic at all. If Threads joins the fediverse, they join the fediverse. Defederating them before we even know what will happen or if they'll even affect this instance doesn't help fight this. A bunch of people telling others they need to leave any instance who doesn't confirm will do actively more harm than Threads might possibly maybe do in the future.