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Threads is adding Fediverse content to social feeds
- sneak 1y ago…so does this mean Meta is receiving my own copyrighted data from my server and storing it on their own servers for the benefit of their platform and apps? Sounds like redistribution and perhaps public performance of copyrighted content without a license.
- JCattheATM 1y ago> Sounds like redistribution and perhaps public performance of copyrighted content without a license. Unless they take from a server with a more permissive license that had the right to distribute it... Kind of hard to stop it since stuff being federated and re-distributed is kind of the point. I guess you could refuse permission to corporations operating something like threads specifically.
- guywithahat 1y agoI would be surprised if any server tried to withhold the rights of the data themselves. The point is to federate, and I can't imagine how you could say Meta can't federate but other companies can
- JCattheATM 1y agoI don't see why you couldn't have a usage agreement or terms of service that said exactly that.
- sneak 1y agoBy default, all rights are reserved. Operating a Mastodon instance doesn’t grant anyone - Meta or mastodon.social - rights to redistribute the copyrighted content you post that is then federated. I could legitimately DMCA most of the fediverse right now if I wanted to.
- _flux 1y agoAren't the protocols used for federation and clients different, i.e. could it be argued when one allows the protocols to be used for federation then one implicitly allows others to also federate? I wonder if one could also DMCA ISPs providing proxy services, IRC or NNTP on the same terms and be successful.
- tuckerman 1y agoThis is a fundamental part of the fediverse, or at least mastodon, right? There can't be an federation without doing exactly this between mastodon instances.
- johnklos 1y agoI, and I'm sure others, are suspicious that F**book will train AI on it, will keep copies and apply their own licenses, et cetera, until someone calls them out on it (ie, sues them).
- emaro 1y agoMe too. However you're free to join or move to an instance that doesn't federate with Threads.
- tuckerman 1y agoThat's fair but the comment I'm responding to seems to take offense at just storing and distributing it on threads, which is exactly what every single fediverse instance has to do. There are also tools for dealing with this, namely you can configure a mastodon instance to not federate with a server. If someone is more concerned about training models on the data and whether that is legal or not, I assume Meta could easily be doing that already if they wanted to via scraping.
- sneak 1y agoNot offense, just pointing it out. My own Mastodon instance is down at the moment; I need to fix it. Posting on a server that federates doesn’t grant anyone a copyright license to the content you post, regardless of the fact that you can choose a server that doesn’t federate.
- rustc 1y agoAll AI companies are already training on any data they can get (by scraping or torrenting). At this point I don't think anyone will be stopping them, see [1] for the latest UK update. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun/06/uk-government-signals-it-will-not-force-tech-firms-to-disclose-how-they-train-ai https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun/06/uk-government-si...
- josteink 1y agoI honestly thought it was talking about the IoT-standard Thread and was seriously confused about how this was supposed to make sense. I had completely forgotten Facebook’s Threads even existed. I can’t see this being enough to resurrect any momentum?
- phyrex 1y agoThere's over 350M monthly active users. Seems like plenty of momentum?
- irelephant 1y agoIs there any source for this, bar meta itself? It has no relevance at all. I see bluesky screenshots everywhere, but not many threads ones.
- lurk2 1y agoI saw these numbers recently too and I honestly think they are fraudulent. Are they counting all the people who accidentally click on Threads as they are scrolling through their Instagram feed? I have literally never heard anyone bring up Threads in conversation, I never see it referenced on other platforms, I never see screenshots of the content there; why is this the case if so many people are using it?
- matt3210 1y agoPut a license that charges for the content when taken by a commercial platform with over 1000 employees. Send them a bill at the end if the year.
- ofcrpls 1y agoExplains the mastodon.social T&C agreement update this morning.
- qualeed 1y agoOther comments here (so far) don't seem super happy with this, but I can't help think this is a good thing primarily because of this: "The fediverse feed isn’t algorithmically ranked, or subject to any of Threads’ rules or moderation; it’s just a reverse-chronological feed of stuff you follow." That's great! Any step we can take away from ultra-algorithimically-optimized feeds, the better, I think. Normalize reverse-chronological feeds again.
- fsflover 1y agoMeta can still choose in which order they show those posts...
- qualeed 1y agoAs stated in the article, for now at least, they wont be.
- 9dev 1y agoThey also promised there’ll never be ads on WhatsApp. Whatever statement Meta makes isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
- qualeed 1y agoNon-algorithmic feeds are a good thing. That sums up my feelings. When that changes, or it gets plastered in ads, my feelings will be "well that was good while it lasted". Until then, I'm choosing not to doom say about it.
- bix6 1y agoAre you familiar with embrace, extend, extinguish?
- qualeed 1y agoSure. I'm also familiar with positive reinforcement. If/when they start touching the reverse-chronological feed with algorithms I'll call it out. Until that time, I'm happy that it's a non-algorithmic feed and will say so. (It's also not clear to me what "extinguish" would look like here. If Threads starts messing with the feed, just go view it anywhere else you view you fediverse feeds)
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoIt brings into question, does the concept of a Fediverse subvert having a variety of communities with different cultures? Imagine putting the Meta/Twitter/Reddit world behind you, posting on Bluesky/Mastodon, and then your content is showing up on Threads next to influencer garbage, AI slop, culture wars, crypto spam, pillow ads. And just as bad or worse, content from those places flooding your parachute community. Those sites function best now as quarantine.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zdragnar 1y ago> then your content is showing up on Threads next to influencer garbage, AI slop, culture wars, crypto spam, pillow ads. Isn't that the whole point of the fediverse? You're distributing your content to other people and lose control of the context it is displayed in.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoBut, like many other ideas in tech, it started as a good sounding idea but it's worth questioning now if it will be good in practice. When the idea was birthed we didn't know the landscape/hellscape social media would become in the 2020s.
- lurk2 1y agoThis already happens. 4chan is mostly screenshots from Reddit, Reddit is mostly screenshots from Twitter, and all of the short form video platforms (Instagram, YouTube) copy trends that originate on TikTok.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoIt's good when specific content goes viral across platforms. I've seen many good tiktoks but I never want to have the app installed or scroll through it, subject to their algorithm. It just won't be good when some high quality small or mid sized community absorbs everything posted to Threads or Tiktok, for example. That's when it loses its identity.
- bachmeier 1y ago> Starting today, if you’ve turned on fediverse sharing in Threads, there will be a new section at the top of your Following feed that takes you to a list of posts from folks you follow on Mastodon, Flipboard, or wherever else you’ve connected your Threads account. Oh, so not real important. I follow some Threads accounts on Mastodon, but very few have clicked the button to enable that. I've even asked professional organizations to do that and they refused. Mark Cuban complains on Bluesky about their dwindling user base, but he refuses to bridge his account.
- bix6 1y agoEmbrace, extend, extinguish. No doubt.