Threads deepens its ties to the open social web, aka the ‘fediverse’ | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
from Fitik@fedia.io to fediverse@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 20:35
https://fedia.io/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/1137675

Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndicated to the fediverse.

#fediverse

threaded - newest

Fitik@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 20:38 next collapse

Note: You can't interact with Threads accounts from Lemmy, but you can interact with Threads accounts from MBin (and maybe PieFed), except if your instance is defederated from them obviously

There's POTUS account for example @potus

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 28 Aug 2024 20:52 next collapse

Yep, pyfedi supports Mastodon integration just like mbin.

rimu@piefed.social on 28 Aug 2024 21:41 collapse

Not quite as good as Mbin. For example you can't follow someone on mastodon from PieFed. They can follow you, though.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 20:59 next collapse

Why not Lemmy?

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 28 Aug 2024 21:09 next collapse

Lemmy doesn't implement Mastodon (which is the fediverse version of Twitter), only their own Lemmy one (Reddit clone). Kbin and Mbin implement both, as does pyfedi/piefed.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 22:42 next collapse

Why does Lemmy not interact with Mastodon if the other two can?

themadcodger@kbin.earth on 28 Aug 2024 23:29 collapse

Design choice by the creators.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 23:53 collapse

Am I the only one who thinks that’s a bad choice? The whole point of the fediverse is that all the things are connected.

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 29 Aug 2024 00:58 collapse

Lemmy is open source and so anyone who wants to add this functionality is free to do so.

Considering who the original creators of Lemmy are and the controversy over lemmygrad.ml however, I'd say that we dodged a bullet, all things considered.

If you want a thing that tries to integrate with everything, consider pyfedi - in addition to Lemmy and Mastodon they also have code to integrate with pixelfed and probably even more things (I'm still learning about all the integrations that it has).

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 01:31 collapse

So I tried to search for pyfedi, and the only things I found are some repos. Not quite sure what to do with that. HOWEVER, a few different repos seemed to list piefed as the thing it do.

So is pyfedi the same as piefed.social ?

I am enjoying the layout of piefed. It’s quite tasty! I hope this is the thing that does the other thing.

But what if I transfer my Lemmy account to Piefed? Will I still be able to create communities on Lemmy.World? Or am I going to just end up with two different accounts, on two different sites, that do 97% the same thing?

Or am I just wrong all around, and pyfedi has nothing to do with piefed, and I’ve stumbled onto a different thing that does the thing that the other thing couldn’t do, but is still connected to, but not in the same way, but still uses the same services?

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 29 Aug 2024 01:56 collapse

So I tried to search for pyfedi, and the only things I found are some repos. Not quite sure what to do
with that. HOWEVER, a few different repos seemed to list piefed as the thing it do.
So is pyfedi the same as piefed.social ?

piefed.social is the flagship instance while pyfedi is the software. By analogy, lemmy.ml is the flagship instance of Lemmy, kbin.social was the flagship instance of the kbin software, and while it doesn't offically have a flagship fedia.io is the largest instance to run the mbin software.

I am enjoying the layout of piefed. It’s quite tasty! I hope this is the thing that does the other thing.

Yes!

But what if I transfer my Lemmy account to Piefed? Will I still be able to create communities on Lemmy.World?

My understanding is that unfortunately, to be the owner of a community or magazine (such as !Fediverse@lemmy.world ) that's local to given instance (lemmy.world here) your account would also have to be local.

Or am I going to just end up with two different accounts, on two different sites, that do 97% the same thing?

From what I understand, most folks pick one favoured instance as their primary one for that 97% - but create the local account to own the magazine/community as well as the rest of the 3%. (Note that you can add your primary account as a mod though, even if it's not local - so you have to create the community on lemmy.world with your lemmy.world account, but then you can add your piefed.social account as a mod to that community and then manage the new lemmy.world community mostly from piefed.social.)

Or am I just wrong all around, and pyfedi has nothing to do with piefed, and I’ve stumbled onto a different thing that does the thing that the other thing couldn’t do, but is still connected to, but not in the same way, but still uses the same services?

What can I say? The fediverse is complicated. But in a good way.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 07:16 collapse

I appriciate the reply. It’s kind of frustrating the way the fediverse works right now. I feel like we’re in 1994 era of the internet. Back then AOL was trying to BE the internet. URLs existed, but to give you an idea of how overlooked they were, Yahoo at one time in the mid 90s valued the AOL keyword for Yahoo over the URL. There are ads where they DON’T list the URL, but they do say “Visit us at AOL Keyword: Yahoo”.

Everything feels very day 1. Like I can clearly see a future for the fediverse where the common man can be interconnected. Much like I said in 1994 using my libraries technology center to access the internet for the first time. I can remember watching the news and the one anchor was trying to explain the internet to people. Specifically email. He said “Ok, so I just put my name in first, Tom, and then I put the anarchy symbol, and then after the anarchy symbol I put AOL.com”.

Meanwhile today we have shopping, and news, and social media, and videos, and everything else from one end to the other.

I could see all that back in 1994. It was obvious what needed to happen.

And right now, what needs to happen is for all services to operate with each other as if you’re always a local user. Everything in the fediverse needs to 100% play nice. The example I always see stated is that the fediverse is like email. Your email can interact with other emails services, but must always be done from your own inbox. But that’s kind of misleading to a degree. Because email is JUST email. The fediverse is email, video, photos, article sharing, social media, I assume there’s a music based aspect I haven’t found yet. The point is, right now these services are very VERY fragmented. I understand it’s decentralized, but it shouldn’t be this fragmented. It doesn’t have to be, and to grow we are going to need to get to a point where we can go to our instance of choice, log in, but then use any number of these services with one account. I can’t currently log into lemmy.world, and browse peer-tube, yet if I leave my instance, I’m no longer in my account. So you say to just create a peer-tube account. Ok, but now that’s fragmented. There’s two accounts. And then maybe I want to share pictures. Well now I need a pixelfed account. Ok, now that’s 3 accounts for 1 fediverse. And the list only grows. Mastodon? 4 accounts.

You get the idea. You can’t say it’s just like email, because with email it’s just one service, therefore always just one account.

I see a future where you log into 1 account from your instance. From that home page on your instance, you can interact with any service that hasn’t banned you, or defederated from your instance. ANY fediverse service. With one account. You can write mastodon messages, post a video to peertube, check your email, post some pictures, whatever. And all your notifications will be in one place. Organized. A centralized decentralization if you will.

Because right now, it’s kind of looking like a patch blanket, where everybody makes their own one patch…but then none of it makes sense together.

And here’s the other thing. EVERYBODY needs to be included. YES, EVERYBODY. You can personally block someone if you like, but right now Lemmy is very very left leaning. And that’s fine. BUT, I do see how it will play out once Threads starts fully federating. It is going to be a culture clash. And that actually in the long run is fine too. Lemmy.World can be very left leaning. But there might be another instance. Lemmy.Republican and that leans very right. Which is actually good. You can block that instance if you want. Instances SHOULD start developing their own personalities.

We should have major instances, and minor instances. The major ones should be general purpose. They can still lean left or right. This is where you’ll find all the popular topics. And I don’t mean Lemmy popular. I mean real world popular. If we’re going to get every single human on the fediverse, we need to realize that our opinions on everything are NOT going to mesh. So, you have each instance cator to a different audience.

Then there’s minor instances. These will be smaller, but host the niche topics. Maybe you have a hobby for collecting trains. That’s going to be a less popular topic, so you’d find an entire instance just dedicated to collecting trains. Different communities on that instance for different aspects of collecting trains. Smaller but dedicated.

Sorry for the long reply. I just see a world that doesn’t exist, and I want it to hurry up already…but then I see people on Lemmy who are actively opposed to, or confused by the idea of how big the fediverse CAN get. We just need to iron out the kinks. I’m having a nerdy day, and just imagining living in this world where the fediverse isn’t some linux crowd only niche topic…but instead the dominant everything conne

Blaze@feddit.org on 29 Aug 2024 07:22 next collapse

Everything feels very day 1.

Because it is.

Lemmy has 2 main devs.

Piefed is developed mostly by a single person.

Mbin has a few more, but not much.

There’s only so much development teams this small can do.

To come back to your question above: you can use fedia.io to connect to both Lemmy communities and Mastodon.

It uses Mbin.

I think you can import your subscriptions from Lemmy (not 100% sure)

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 29 Aug 2024 13:51 collapse

I can’t currently log into lemmy.world, and browse peer-tube, yet if I leave my instance, I’m no longer in my account. So you say to just create a peer-tube account. Ok, but now that’s fragmented. There’s two accounts. And then maybe I want to share pictures. Well now I need a pixelfed account. Ok, now that’s 3 accounts for 1 fediverse. And the list only grows. Mastodon? 4 accounts.
I see a future where you log into 1 account from your instance. From that home page on your instance, you can interact with any service that hasn’t banned you, or defederated from your instance. ANY fediverse service. With one account. You can write mastodon messages, post a video to peertube, check your email, post some pictures, whatever. And all your notifications will be in one place. Organized. A centralized decentralization if you will.
I just see a world that doesn’t exist, and I want it to hurry up already

Hey, I think maybe you misunderstood me. The "all under one account" thing is possible for the most part - here's the PR which allows mbin (and thus mbin accounts) to do peertube https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/pull/782 and in pyfedi (and thus piefed accounts) there seems to also be peertube integration https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/app/community/util.py#L75 along with pixelfed integration ( https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/app/user/routes.py#L981 ) - though I'd grant that you're correct about there still being rough edges that need to be cleaned up, but I am confident that they will get cleaned up over time.

So that part of the vision is pretty much already here. The only thing is if you want to create and own the magazine/community (the 3%) ... well see https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/issues/869 (but I think even remote account ownership is on a wishlist somewhere, so even that may get taken up some day.

There's even an open item about being able to transfer your account to another instance (account portability), see https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/issues/171

timestatic@feddit.org on 28 Aug 2024 23:56 collapse

What happened to Kbin btw? I used to be on there since the start but the page has been broken since a while for me

Zorque@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 00:00 next collapse

It was run by one guy who had health issues. So it shut down. Mbin is the main fork now.

timestatic@feddit.org on 29 Aug 2024 00:05 collapse

Ah I see. Good thing someone continued it tho!

abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us on 29 Aug 2024 00:54 collapse

The owner of kbin.social (and creator of kbin incidentally) has been MIA for a few months now, so it's presumed that it's over. I haven't heard of anything concrete regarding the fate of kbin.social or ernest though - unless someone has heard differently, it remains possible that ernest returns in a year or two and brings kbin.social back up.

Edit: I thought that https://kbin.earth/ still existed as an instance still running ernest's original flavour of kbin (as opposed to its sucessor mbin) but it turns out it has been moved to mbin as per the reply below.

With that, I'm not sure if anyone is still on the original kbin codebase at this point.

jwr1@kbin.earth on 29 Aug 2024 17:03 collapse

This is not true, as of 4 months ago. kbin.earth is running Mbin now.

Fitik@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 21:10 next collapse

Because right now the Threads federation is still pretty one sided, the Fediverse users can reply to the Threads posts, but the Threads users can't see the Fediverse posts, only replies

And with how Lemmy works, you can't reply to the microblogging accounts, you can't reply to Mastodon's posts neither, so you can't get your replies federated

joyjoy@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 00:09 collapse

That doesn’t seem right. I remember responding to a few mastodon threads from lemmy and I was able to see my reply on the other end.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 28 Aug 2024 21:10 collapse

lemmy devs just havent put in the effort, but its clear they are on that path.

deegeese@sopuli.xyz on 28 Aug 2024 21:16 next collapse

Do regular Mastodon instances and clients play nicely with Threads?

I’ve been on Mastodon for a while and never seen a Threads user.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 28 Aug 2024 21:22 next collapse

meta has not made using threads very easy for its users. only the technical or high visibility accounts seem to have cared to jump through the necessary hoops.

RandomStickman@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 21:25 next collapse

On paper it should play well, it appeared as Mastodon would on my Mbin instance. A lot of Mastodon instances have preemptively defederated from Threads though, so you need to shop around.

JayTreeman@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 22:02 collapse

Or just don't federate with threads.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is a thing

woelkchen@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 21:26 next collapse

Do regular Mastodon instances and clients play nicely with Threads?

You can’t connect to Threads using a Mastodon client but you can follow select Threads accounts from the Mastodon instance your client is connected to. Threads is still in what is basically a public beta. That’s why there are currently no ads there either (but they were announced recently).

Fitik@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 21:26 collapse

Yea, they play fine, I use Misskey fork as my main instance, and it even supports quotes

Maybe your instance have defederated from them? Also the Fediverse sharing is opt-in in Threads, so like 95% or more Threads users haven't turned it on, cause they have no idea it exists

finickydesert@lemmy.ml on 28 Aug 2024 23:04 collapse

Which fork?

Fitik@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 23:24 collapse

Sharkey, but Threads quotes show up in basic Misskey as well

finickydesert@lemmy.ml on 29 Aug 2024 00:13 collapse

I tried regular misskey but I can’t read Japanese

Fitik@fedia.io on 29 Aug 2024 00:31 collapse

Understandable, I can't neither, that's why I use English-speaking instance

some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org on 29 Aug 2024 04:22 collapse

Why would I want to interact with people on threads? I’m here for the Lemmy community.

helenslunch@feddit.nl on 28 Aug 2024 21:46 next collapse

Currently, Threads users can like the replies from other servers, but they can’t yet reply to them, as the feature is still in beta and under development.

arudesalad@sh.itjust.works on 28 Aug 2024 22:28 collapse

<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/87ffc596-b863-4df0-97f0-518c44476e81.jpeg"> It took around a year for a solo dev (and a couple contributors) to develop a fully federated platform. Why is it taking one of the largest companies on the planet this long to make such tiny changes that are useless anyway.

And why are they releasing it like this instead of releasing everything at once?

Stovetop@lemmy.world on 28 Aug 2024 22:36 next collapse

Because every step of the way, they need a flock of MBAs to figure out the answer to the question “How do we make money off of this?”

Ephera@lemmy.ml on 29 Aug 2024 00:03 collapse

I’m rather guessing the other way around. Because they can’t directly extract money from this, they can’t justify to their shareholders to sit down full-time devs. Instead, this is a project solely run by interns and student.

helenslunch@feddit.nl on 28 Aug 2024 22:53 next collapse

I’m guessing because they don’t want it to.

Not_mikey@slrpnk.net on 29 Aug 2024 01:08 collapse

It is a different level of scale, mastodon has about 1 million users spread over a bunch of instances. Threads has over 200 million users on one instance. also due to the network nature of social media the amount of connections and messages sent through those connections can scale exponentially with the amount of users.

Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me on 29 Aug 2024 05:08 collapse

Definitely can appreciate the carefulness here. Imagine they just open the floodgates and now some random Mastodon instance on a $5 VPS is getting hammered with millions of activities because they followed an account with millions of followers on Threads, and now it’s federating millions of likes and thousands of posts.

Meta is trying to be a good fediverse participant here. They could just come in and crush the entire fediverse and be like “lol should have gotten beefier servers”.

arudesalad@sh.itjust.works on 30 Aug 2024 22:31 collapse

I’d hope it’s carefulness but it doesn’t seem like it. Facebook should want to destroy fediverse instances (from a business point of view), they are supposed to be a monopoly and the fediverse is their biggest competitor.

Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me on 30 Aug 2024 22:52 collapse

Only time will tell. They’ve definitely done their own share of EEE like for a while you could use Facebook Messenger over XMPP then closed it down.

[deleted] on 28 Aug 2024 23:28 next collapse

.

ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org on 28 Aug 2024 23:28 next collapse

Great.
I joined the Fediverse to escape Facebook’s toxic interpretation of communities, so Facebook is coming to the Fediverse instead.
Just great…

Auster@lemm.ee on 28 Aug 2024 23:47 next collapse

Blocking everyone and every community you see from Facebook’s new parasite social media could be good, me thinks.

Fitik@fedia.io on 28 Aug 2024 23:57 next collapse

@Auster You can just use an instance that is defederated from them, that's the beauty of the Fediverse

According to https://lemm.ee/instances your instance already blocks them for example

@ExtremeDullard

tilefan@lemm.ee on 28 Aug 2024 23:57 next collapse

can’t you selectively block entire instances? you can in Boost

ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org on 29 Aug 2024 00:24 next collapse

It’s not just a matter of blocking Threads users.

Facebook is coming on here to slurp up data I don’t want them to have, and enriching their own Threads ecosystem with Fediverse content they haven’t lifted a finger to create.

Not to mention, when Threads users are able to fully interact in the Fediverse, do you really want that particular bunch to create noise in your communities? I don’t. There’s a reason why I avoid Facebook in all its forms.

tilefan@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 00:29 next collapse

right but if I block their instance, they can never interact with me and vice versa.

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 05:14 next collapse

Aw, buddy, cheer up.

Here’s some minions memes doing racist things! I mean, I assume thats what goes on if you’re on facebook.

kobra@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 05:20 collapse

Uh… this fediverse stuff is all on the public internet. Facebook could be slurping it up just as easily without joining at all.

rglullis@communick.news on 29 Aug 2024 14:41 next collapse

It doesn’t matter. People will never understand the difference between the open web and walled gardens.

People say they want freedom, but in reality they want to become little tyrants. We’ve been asking for years to have a level-up playing field, and now that we do these reactionaries are going to find something else about it.

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 30 Aug 2024 07:09 collapse

Definitely not as easily and 100% not legally. I actually don’t think they would scrape stuff off of the fediverse like that because that is just a lawsuit waiting. Besides, scraping is really not feasible when it comes to getting information like that.

Auster@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 00:41 collapse

From the instances I used, it seems to be a mixed bag. Some even allowed for the user to block domains unrelated to the fediverse.

Auster@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 00:40 collapse

Was commenting more generally, in case there’s someone against Facebook in instances that don’t block them.

And about lemm.ee, although the guy running it is strongly against defederation, I guess Facebook the company is too much even for him. "<.<

infeeeee@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 14:21 collapse

There was a vote about it in !meta@lemm.ee : lemm.ee/post/851217

I wanted to vote against defederation (edit: i was offline that week or something, I can see I didn’t vote) I liked on this instance that we are treated as adults, and the admin let us decide what we want to see. You can block instances if you want. Defederating with Threads even before we can see how it would work goes against this philosophy.

Afaik there is no way to see anything from threads on lemmy yet, connection with mastodon like services work only, so we are again debating about a not yet existing thing.

If it will work between threads and lemmy I will look for another instance where I can devide what I want to see.

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 30 Aug 2024 06:01 collapse

I liked on this instance that we are treated as adults

Having no defederation is not being treated as adults, it’s just a free for all. User-specific blocking is not adequate for stopping bad influences on the fediverse and simply can’t do the same as instance-level defederation.

Preferring no defederation at all is akin to “free speech absolutism” - it asserts that anyone can say anything and anyone else can just choose to not listen individually. But that’s not really a good path for a welcoming and understanding environment.

Maeve@kbin.earth on 29 Aug 2024 00:32 collapse

How can we know?

SorteKanin@feddit.dk on 29 Aug 2024 07:30 next collapse

You should just join an instance that blocks threads.net. Fortunately there are many of such instances. Your current instance doesn’t seem to defederate any other instance, which is kind of suspect on its own.

Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world on 30 Aug 2024 06:28 collapse

SDF is a very hands-off instance. I’ve seen many trolls in bad actors on there. It also has some management issues since it can go down for long periods of time.

The only reason I have an account there and the only reason I would encourage anyone to use it is because it’s run by the SDF foundation and it will probably be around forever. Well at least as long SDF itself.

haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com on 29 Aug 2024 16:24 collapse

Check fedipact.online for instances that have defederated threads. Good luck! :)

Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world on 30 Aug 2024 06:32 collapse

Fedipact needs much more exposure. It’s important to spread this message both because of Facebook’s evil practices, but also that they favor hostile users and have atrocious moderation letting a lot of nasty shit slide that shouldn’t.

haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com on 30 Aug 2024 08:30 next collapse

Feel free to make a community or find one and link it here! :) i‘ll happily join and put in some work.

threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works on 31 Aug 2024 05:47 collapse

Feel free to post about it in !fedigrow@lemm.ee!

Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world on 11 Sep 2024 05:15 collapse
Jimbo@yiffit.net on 29 Aug 2024 05:26 next collapse

I am so glad my instance is defederated

pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 29 Aug 2024 13:16 next collapse

same

haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com on 29 Aug 2024 16:24 collapse

Amen

Etterra@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 06:15 next collapse

Boo. Go away Zuck and take your shitty vertical videos with you.

NostraDavid@programming.dev on 29 Aug 2024 12:26 collapse

We used to say that people who made vertical videos had Vertical Video Syndrome. It was a terrible time.

fadhl3y@lemmy.world on 29 Aug 2024 12:02 next collapse

I don’t think i’ve ever seen a Threads message in any of my Lemmy / Mastodon feeds. Perhaps I’m not mixing in the right circles?

RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works on 29 Aug 2024 13:04 next collapse

Your instance likely defederated threads

Flax_vert@feddit.uk on 29 Aug 2024 14:10 collapse

Threads posts wouldn’t really appear on lemmy unless they deliberately format the post to tag a community. And they wouldn’t be able to see replies either.

Eggyhead@fedia.io on 29 Aug 2024 13:13 next collapse

I don’t like this rebranding to “open social web” like it was made for them.

Randomgal@lemmy.ca on 29 Aug 2024 18:15 collapse

Something that is open and free was, by definition, made for everyone. Even the robber barons you hate.

Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee on 29 Aug 2024 18:39 next collapse

I don’t want to see commercial content. I also don’t want others to see it because it will pollute the culture of the Fediverse.

desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 29 Aug 2024 19:51 collapse

it will help it grow, maybe poisoning it in the process, but grow none the less.

Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee on 30 Aug 2024 12:45 collapse

Pretty much like everything else corporations do then!

Emmie@lemm.ee on 30 Aug 2024 01:40 collapse

Fediverse is not super far from original internet idea with the exception of convenient block feature. Let’s hope that’s enough to prevent the sequel.