Mastodon comms person here. We're discussing how we go forward. The questions being asked are all absolutely reasonable, and we want to do what we can to improve the terms (that we do need to have in place) taking into account the feedback and offers of support.
Do you mean you're trying to access Threads' ActivityPub endpoint(s)?
I'm pretty certain that you have to use signed requests, and bear in mind that not all users have federation enabled.
I just confirmed that by using the fedify CLI to test. Running fedify lookup andypiper@threads.net fails, but with fedify lookup -a andypiper@threads.net (which spins up a local server and performs authenticated requests) I get back JSON from the WebFinger endpoint.
You'll probably get some folks able to share their experiences integrating / testing with Threads federation in some of the Fediverse Developers related Matrix rooms.
won’t implement it.
"not sure downvotes make sense" -> it might not be a good fit for what the app is -> so maybe it would not make sense to implement.
I should be able to search for a keyword or URL on all instances
We're working on this. It's part of Fediscovery. Optional opt-in discovery across instances, if a user wants their content to be discoverable across instances.
Search exists. I'm not sure downvotes make sense in the context of a microblogging app, but YMMV. There's a lot of things to work on, for sure.
The 501(c)(3) is a fundraising entity, and will continue to exist. There will be a new independent European non-profit that will "own" (for the want of a better word) the other entities. Legal structures and things are not my forte (IANAL), that's my understanding of what is happening in so far as I'm involved in the discussions and what I'm able to tell you.
Checking about getting it updated.
there's a big difference between running a service on volunteers, and having full-time folks to keep things running / answer the regulation discussions / keep maintaining / keep adding the features that folks are looking for. This is not primarily an infrastructure spend. There's also an amount of legal work involved, unfortunately. So, those are some of the elements we're looking at.
These are part of the assets that will be transferred from the GmbH to the non-profit.
I wrote about this on my blog. I like the notion and points made here, but I also think we're not helping by re-inventing things that already exist, so I'm torn on it. I have been happy with the existing one.
"new" == ~3 years old (but looking to move from alpha to beta in 2024 IIRC). It's a good server!
No, we did not (nor did we use any other AI tool).