We’ve known for a while that Threads is joining the fediverse, and parent company Meta has now provided a preview of how things will work.
The concept of the fediverse is to network together individual social media platforms, such that you can post once on one of them, and then share your post on other services …
The fediverse at a glance
The fediverse – short for “federated universe” – describes the idea that different social media platforms can be both independent and interconnected.
The term was first used for social networks which used a particular sharing protocol called OStatus, of which Mastodon was a key advocate, but this has been largely superseded by ActivityPub. This allows you to post and read on one social network, but share posts to others, and also receive updates from those platforms.
Threads joining the fediverse
Engadget reports on a presentation shared by Meta at the online fediverse conference, FediForum.
Instagram engineer Peter Cottle gave a short presentation on “Threads in the Fediverse” at FediForum, a virtual event for decentralized social media enthusiasts. In the demo, Cottle explains how Threads users will be able to opt-in to fediverse sharing and offered some insight into how Meta is thinking about its role in the fediverse.
In a short video demo, first spotted by The Verge, Cottle shows off a new account setting called “fediverse sharing.” As the name suggests, the menu will enable users to make their posts viewable from Mastodon and other platforms that use ActivityPub […]
Visually, the fediverse will be represented on Threads by an icon that looks a bit like a planet (the symbol has previously been spotted in code in the app). Cottle explained that users who have enabled fediverse sharing will have the symbol viewable on their profiles and that they’ll see an indication in the app’s composer if a post will be visible in the fediverse.
Cottle also confirmed that only public-facing accounts will have the ability to share to the fediverse. He also noted that users will have a 5-minute window before posts go live in order to make any changes or edits as Threads can’t guarantee a deleted Threads post is also deleted from the fediverse.
Meta has been testing limited fediverse support for a small number of accounts, but there’s no word yet on when full two-way support will roll out to all users.
Trending posts fully rolling out in the US
One huge omission when Threads first launched was a Trending posts feature. Many X users rely on this to quickly catch up on the key issues of the day, but Threads initially declined to offer its own version.
That changed last month, when the company began a small test, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now indicated that this is now coming to all US users.
Photo by Omar Flores on Unsplash
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