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This is huge and probably the first time Meta has made things interoperable with external services. > Zuck: "Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts

by hn1986 3y ago

This is huge and probably the first time Meta has made things interoperable with external services. > Zuck: "Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol. Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I'm pretty optimistic about this."

verdverm 3y ago
Big endorsement for ActivityPub too. I've been sitting on the sidelines waiting to see which federated protocol gets adopted by the big players in the social media space
- hn1986 3y ago
  Mastodon is receiving this positively, as well. https://mas.to/tags/threads https://mas.to/tags/threads
- noirscape 3y ago
  It'll probably be ActivityPub. All the other protocols are too onerous for people to understand. AP has the simplicity of email, the potential for easy centralization (...like email, which makes it aligned with corporate interests) and is something that most users will be able to figure out. It's also very much build around the "worse is better" mindset, where the protocol has very obvious deficiencies yet people are so used to those deficiencies that it's growing in spite of those with no replacement in sight. ActivityPub will succeed for the same reason that Outlook is still the most used email client today even though everyone can agree that almost any other client is better: it's entrenched. Nostr and Bluesky are trying to do decentralized identity, which while admirable, doesn't really align with corporate interests and it's left the federating/decentralized content parts very underdeveloped. Like, functionally speaking Bluesky is just a Twitter clone with an odd account scheme at the moment, their stuff doesn't actually federate, while Nostr has approximately zero relevance. (Bluesky at least has a userbase, even if I would personally consider it to be "the worst parts of Twitter before Elon took over". The worst of Twitter right now is well, honestly I would just say the entire site and be done with it.)
  - verdverm 3y ago
    Thanks, this is helpful. I'm going to give AP a go. Is it worth running self-hosted or better to just sign up at https://mas.to https://mas.to? > the worst parts of Twitter before Elon took over Do you mean primarily self promotion and aggrandizement?
    - edent 3y ago
      Self-hosted is possible - but you'll be tending to your server a lot. Media cache fills up quickly, upgrades can be complex, even a moderately popular post can eat bandwidth. It is certainly possible but it's like the early days of blogging. If you want to learn how to run a system, do it. If you want to spend your time interacting with people rather than machines, use a dedicated service like mas.to.
      - verdverm 3y ago
        If I have a popular post, do other servers use their media cache to reduce load on my instance?
        edent 3y ago
        They should do, yes. But a popular post of mine was federated to over 2,500 servers - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/09/how-far-did-my-post-go-on-the-fediverse/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/09/how-far-did-my-post-go-on-t... Once you have a large enough following, your instance will send messages to the servers of all your followers. If they repost something, it will go to all their followers - and so on.
        verdverm 3y ago
        Thanks again! Do you have any recommendations for software for self-hosted? --- I'm somewhat leaning towards https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/ https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/ since it is written in Go and I could contribute back
    - 3y ago
- LastTrain 3y ago
  I remember thinking the same thing about IM, XMPP, and SIP in the mid aughts. I'm still waiting!
precommunicator 3y ago
Not the first time. Messenger used to support XMPP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266769
- olah_1 3y ago
  The first time they went from “no support” to “support”. They have absolutely done the reverse move haha
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  Messages on facebook (don't know if that's different or just predates it) also used to be email compatible. Pretty sure they killed that since I last used facebook.
  - pndy 3y ago
    Yes, there was such feature and I would be surprised if it would be still there; it was probably killed shortly after they introduced Messenger in place of Chat
rsynnott 3y ago
> probably the first time Meta has made things interoperable with external services. Didn’t they support XMMP at some point years ago?
- pndy 3y ago
  They did, just like Google and then both companies stopped supporting XMPP - in 2013 and 2014 respectively [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Non-native_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Non-native_deployments And thus, Meta cannot be trusted not only because of various privacy issues raised in last days by users regarding its joining fediverse, but also because it's highly possible that once it'll gather enough data and/or capture enough users it'll drop support for ActivityPub

by hn1986 3y ago

verdverm 3y ago

Big endorsement for ActivityPub too. I've been sitting on the sidelines waiting to see which federated protocol gets adopted by the big players in the social media space

hn1986 3y ago
Mastodon is receiving this positively, as well. https://mas.to/tags/threads https://mas.to/tags/threads
noirscape 3y ago
It'll probably be ActivityPub. All the other protocols are too onerous for people to understand. AP has the simplicity of email, the potential for easy centralization (...like email, which makes it aligned with corporate interests) and is something that most users will be able to figure out. It's also very much build around the "worse is better" mindset, where the protocol has very obvious deficiencies yet people are so used to those deficiencies that it's growing in spite of those with no replacement in sight. ActivityPub will succeed for the same reason that Outlook is still the most used email client today even though everyone can agree that almost any other client is better: it's entrenched. Nostr and Bluesky are trying to do decentralized identity, which while admirable, doesn't really align with corporate interests and it's left the federating/decentralized content parts very underdeveloped. Like, functionally speaking Bluesky is just a Twitter clone with an odd account scheme at the moment, their stuff doesn't actually federate, while Nostr has approximately zero relevance. (Bluesky at least has a userbase, even if I would personally consider it to be "the worst parts of Twitter before Elon took over". The worst of Twitter right now is well, honestly I would just say the entire site and be done with it.)
- verdverm 3y ago
  Thanks, this is helpful. I'm going to give AP a go. Is it worth running self-hosted or better to just sign up at https://mas.to https://mas.to? > the worst parts of Twitter before Elon took over Do you mean primarily self promotion and aggrandizement?
  - edent 3y ago
    Self-hosted is possible - but you'll be tending to your server a lot. Media cache fills up quickly, upgrades can be complex, even a moderately popular post can eat bandwidth. It is certainly possible but it's like the early days of blogging. If you want to learn how to run a system, do it. If you want to spend your time interacting with people rather than machines, use a dedicated service like mas.to.
    - verdverm 3y ago
      If I have a popular post, do other servers use their media cache to reduce load on my instance?
      - edent 3y ago
        They should do, yes. But a popular post of mine was federated to over 2,500 servers - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/09/how-far-did-my-post-go-on-the-fediverse/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/09/how-far-did-my-post-go-on-t... Once you have a large enough following, your instance will send messages to the servers of all your followers. If they repost something, it will go to all their followers - and so on.
        verdverm 3y ago
        Thanks again! Do you have any recommendations for software for self-hosted? --- I'm somewhat leaning towards https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/ https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/ since it is written in Go and I could contribute back
  - 3y ago
LastTrain 3y ago
I remember thinking the same thing about IM, XMPP, and SIP in the mid aughts. I'm still waiting!

precommunicator 3y ago

Not the first time. Messenger used to support XMPP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9266769

olah_1 3y ago
The first time they went from “no support” to “support”. They have absolutely done the reverse move haha
extraduder_ire 3y ago
Messages on facebook (don't know if that's different or just predates it) also used to be email compatible. Pretty sure they killed that since I last used facebook.
- pndy 3y ago
  Yes, there was such feature and I would be surprised if it would be still there; it was probably killed shortly after they introduced Messenger in place of Chat

rsynnott 3y ago

> probably the first time Meta has made things interoperable with external services. Didn’t they support XMMP at some point years ago?

pndy 3y ago
They did, just like Google and then both companies stopped supporting XMPP - in 2013 and 2014 respectively [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Non-native_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Non-native_deployments And thus, Meta cannot be trusted not only because of various privacy issues raised in last days by users regarding its joining fediverse, but also because it's highly possible that once it'll gather enough data and/or capture enough users it'll drop support for ActivityPub