Threads is for whoever Meta can sell it to, and I think it was pretty far along in its development before they actually committed to ActivityPub support.
Threads is for whoever Meta can sell it to, and I think it was pretty far along in its development before they actually committed to ActivityPub support.
Threads users are much more likely to interact with other microblog software like Mastodon than with Lemmy. It might be possible to post from Threads to Lemmy now by tagging a community much like Mastodon, but I have never seen it done. Lemmy.world does not block threads.net.
You should not trust them.
I don’t think a Mastodon server attempting to attract a mainstream audience should block them though, at least not at this point. We have a chance to welcome millions of people who wouldn’t have even heard of the fediverse otherwise.
There are some loud voices in the fediverse who don’t want it to be very welcoming. Here are a couple examples:
Threads defederation - what could onboard people to the fediverse faster than a giant platform run by Facebook joining? Yes, I hate Facebook as much as everyone else here, but they’re making an offramp for their users and half the fediverse wants to close that off?
Overbearing enforcement of norms - yes, it’s good if people put alt text on their images and content warnings on stuff lots of people find upsetting. It’s harmful to hassle people about it until they leave.
I think people who a small network with strong social norms are better off on servers that are selective about what they federate with to ensure stricter adherence to the preferences of their users. One of the great things about federated systems is that users can pick a place that’s run in a way that works for them.
It was hit with a DDOS for an extended period of time. I suspect the attackers were successful in substantially hampering adoption of Lemmy as a whole.
They have marketing budgets.
Yes, it’s possible to get a rough estimate with some technical work, but AP makes it easy for anyone.
They’re making requests at unknown intervals, often many times per day. Each IP address might represent multiple unique users, or one user might have multiple IPs.
That’s most of it. ActivityPub also makes it possible to know who is subscribed. It’s very hard to count how many people are subscribed to an RSS feed.
I would LOVE feedback from folks if you get a chance to try it out!
I have feedback completely unrelated to the recommendation engine: please consider using CSS prefers-color-scheme instead of defaulting to light mode.
The fact that it’s been out for a year and federation is still only half-implemented suggests to me the decision to add it was pretty late in the development process, even if it was early in the marketing process.