629

When Meta launched their new Twitter competitor Threads on July 5, they said that it would be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon, and all the other decentralized social networks in the fediverse "soon".

But on July 14, @alexeheath of the Verge reported that Meta's saying ActivityPub integration's "a long way out". Hey wait a second. Make up your mind already!

From the perspective of the "free fediverse" that's not welcoming Meta, the new positioning that ActivityPub integration is "a long way out" is encouraging. OK, it's not as good as "when hell freezes over," but it's a heckuva lot better than "soon." In fact, I'd go so far as to say "a long way out" is a clear victory for the free fediverse's cause.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Kichae@kbin.social 43 points 1 year ago

I think it makes entry into the EU easier, but they're receiving headwinds on two fronts there. There's no need for them to implement federation if they can't overcome the other regulatory hurdles first.

[-] jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 year ago

Yep. Federation could conceivably respond to the EU's requirement for interoperability -- and they could do it in a way that puts a lot of barriers to people actually moving, so works well for them. Of course the EU would say that didn't meet the requirement, which would lead to a multi-year legal battle and eventually Meta would probably pay a billion dollar fine (as they routinely do -- it's just a cost of doing business) and promise to remove the barriers (which they wouldn't, and then there would be another multi-year legal battle).

But none of that works if the EU won't allow Threads for some other reason!

Still, my guess is that they'll figure out a way around the EU's objections to Threads ... we shall see ...

[-] Kichae@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Still, my guess is that they’ll figure out a way around the EU’s objections to Threads

I think it's more likely that they'll hope demand is high enough that the EU is forced to let them in.

[-] jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I think we're in violent agreement here: getting the EU to drop their objections is certainly one way around them! So yeah, they'll probably try to use the demand for Threads to push back on the DMA's anti-trust-ish provisions (which as I understand is the current blockage). And then they'll try to use their ActivityPub integration to push back on the interoperability requirements, no doubt characterizing them as unrealistic. It's predictable but still irritating.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
629 points (95.0% liked)

Fediverse

17734 readers
34 users here now

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS