this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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I'll say it again...
Threads is a MASTODON-type app. Not Lemmy... Mastodon!
I truly don't understand people in the Lemmy-sphere getting their panties in a bunch over this.
@RxBrad
@pinkdrunkenelephants
They arent smart, they’re reactionaries
This is true - the bigger impact would be on Kbin instances that are both Threadiverse and Microblogverse facing.
However, if you go on Mastodon you can see Lemmy threads as posts which you can click through to the hosting instance and also boost (but not downvote). So for Lemmy if Threads.net federates, the biggest impact would be exposure of content to Threads users who then come in to Lemmy instances but not logged in or who could boost content and distort things.
For Kbin instances and also Mastodon it could mean being swamped with content from Threads.net.
Personally I do think overall the Kbin/Lemmy/Mastodon servers should probably not federate with Threads.net. The content appears to be poor and it could flood the fediverse with crap, when really it's still small and needs to grow organically. Threads.net is at 70m users already and rising rapidly, while Mastodon is at 8m (1.6m active) and the Threadiverse is more like 130k across Kbin and Lemmy. Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy need time to establish what it means to be an independent federated social media network. They can always federate with Threads.net in the future - rather than it being Meta's choice, it should be the communities choice if and when they want to federate with a behemoth network.
I would not be surprised that after Twitter, Meta’s next target is Reddit, which is ripe for a serious commercial rival. Meta are probably working on a Reddit replacement, using activitypub and their experience with Threads. If you federate already with Threads, then it is a relatively small step to extend that to Meta’s Reddit killer. Maybe federation with Threads will automatically be extended by Meta to this new app. Give them an inch….
I was a bit confused about this as well. Once Threads implements ActivityPub, what would federation with lemmy.world actually look like in practice? I understand how federation works between Lemmy instances, but how would a microblogging platform fit in? Would Threads users just be able to post to Lemmy, or would it somehow show up in a Lemmy community when a Threads user makes a post on Threads?
I'm not really understanding how two different services like Lemmy and Threads can be intercompatible.
Lemmy communities are "groups" in ActivityPub parlance, and groups do exist on the microblogging platforms. Using Mastodon as an example for now, a Masto user could find the group equivalent to a Lemmy community and make a post and/or comment there and it would show up on
lemmy.world
and anybody else who federates with that Masto instance. In reality, the groups experience is kind of terrible and a poor interface to these thread-style communities, and you lose all kinds of features like the recency/score sorting algorithm, the ability to downvote things, etc.It would take a true masochist to post to
lemmy.world
from Mastodon, which is why you almost never see it. I've seen one Mastodon user in my time on the threadiverse so far. Most people who are already on the microblogging side of the fediverse have just chosen to register a separate account on a threadiverse instance so they can have an actual usable interface rather than stuffing a link aggregator through a blog-shaped hole.Groups don't even exist on Threads currently. Maybe they will by the time they implement ActivityPub, but they may not consider that to be a core goal as a microblogging, Twitter-style platform which has no obvious use for them. This would currently make Threads an even worse interface to the threadiverse (kind of ironic) than Mastodon, which I can't stress enough is already awful. You would just have to search for individual posts by browsing somewhere like
lemmy.world
directly, copying and pasting the URLs into the Threads app or web site to populate the conversation in their interface in order to reply to the posts and comments there.In short, using Lemmy via Threads is probably going to be such a nightmare that only turbo-nerds will try to do it, and turbo-nerds are more likely to realize "This is awful and I should just go join Lemmy or kbin or something," than persist with that hassle long-term. Now, kbin users have more justification to be concerned about how Threads will impact their communities, because kbin supports microblogging directly--in corporate terms, it's like if Reddit and Twitter combined into one site that you could tab between on the fly. This means kbin users will be more likely to see Threads content and vice versa.
Check out kbin, it supports both
@RxBrad
@corroded
As you can see here I can also comment from Mostodon, the most mastodon-like app ;-) . Likewise, threads can participate in threadiverse once they federate. That's how federation works.
@pinkdrunkenelephants
But it's literally the one time you've done so. Because it's probably a royal pain to make it happen.
I can technically eat soup with a fork. It won't be easy... or pretty. Much like I can force Mastodon to happen here on Lemmy.
I'd much rather use a spoon/app that was intended for the purpose I'm using it for.
@RxBrad
I can subscribe to a magazine from Mastodon. This is not too much pain.
But you are right, my mastodon account has another purpose. To **true** participate in threadiverse I use a kbin spoon.
But I think the threads users are more painless....
@pomi @RxBrad@lemmy.world
Replying from Mastodon, just for giggles. As far as I can tell, the feed for this /c is just a random stream of unthreaded comments, sorted by when they're posted, with no indication which post they're actually referring to.
I'm not even totally sure if you can even create a new post (and I don't want to spam the sub trying).
So, yeah.. it's possible. But by no means an ideal way to do Lemmy.
And it will still connect to Lemmy, since we all use the ActivityPub protocol?
What is your point, exactly?
Honestly, maybe the incompatible protocols should just be severed from each other.
It's novel that Mastodon can technically talk to Lemmy. But why? It's such a hassle to make it happen -- and the results are so messy.
If you want Mastodon to happen on Lemmy, it just ends up being easier to post a URL to a Mastodon post than it is to try and use the "official" federated methods. Just like people could post a link to a tweet or Facebook post.
Kbin supports both approaches.