Finally I'm getting around to listen to @mike 's Dot.Social episode with @rklambo and @pcottle from #meta, talking about #threads.

Johannes Ernst

@mike asks: How foundational in the Fediverse to Threads? Or is it just a feature?

A: Fediverse was part of the planning from the very beginning. There are lot of new things to introduce users to, and also a lot of new things to understand when federating beyond what a typical app does. Like how can users control what happens, and understand what happens?

Johannes Ernst

@mike asks: what about other federation protocols like #AtProto?

A: #ActivityPub is a W3C standard, that's important. It's also been battle-tested over the years.

@pcottle muses it would be interesting to "port over" some AtProto features to ActivityPub, like account portability.

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Rachel: people have more choice [when their apps integrate with the #fediverse]. They get to go where the rules are that align most with their values, and they get to vote with their feet.

Also exciting from the product development perspective: if you don't have to build your own [social] graph, you get to spend more time on cool functionality.

Johannes Ernst

Mike asks: how has the reaction been?

Rachel: people are excited to see that we are actually doing this! So far we are not actively promoting the Fediverse, but the adoption numbers have been good. We also still have some things to work through, like communicating tradeoffs.

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Peter: people have been asking creators on Threads to turn on Fediverse sharing (it's opt-in): it's so much easier to turn on fediverse sharing than to post to an entirely different social network.

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Mike: what are the next steps?

Rachel: first milestone was the publish out from Threads.

2nd and next: get engagement from the fediverse back into threads ie comments and likes etc

3rd: follow people from the fediverse in Threads.

Johannes Ernst

Mike commends Rachel and Peter and other Meta people reaching out to the community and listening to concerns and feedback, such as at #fediforum:

I would agree with that. It's unusual for a large company to do this kind of thing, but absolutely the right and necessary thing to do when engaging with the Fediverse.

Johannes Ernst

Mike: What are the main concerns?

Rachel: fair share of criticism. Trying to approach this as a good citizen.

Pulling the rug out of it now would also impact very negatively the overall story Meta has been trying to build about open source and how they engage with the community.

Johannes Ernst

Shout-out to @mike: he's asking #Meta all the good questions about federation and beyond on his dot.social podcast.

Now: do you see federation more broadly as it relates to (other parts of) Meta, like Instagram and other social products you have?

Nor surprisingly, he gets a bit of a non-answer: it's early days, we have a lot to learn, how are people reacting etc.

Johannes Ernst

@pcottle adds that in his view, the fediverse makes more sense for public conversations, as opposed to his example of his own Instagram profile that he has set to private.

Johannes Ernst

Both Rachel and Peter suggest that some moderation functionality could/should become part of the protocol stack. #AtProto does composable moderation and that is really cool. Peter hopes that #ActivityPub may learn from it and evolve in this direction.

Johannes Ernst

Rachel: one of the challenges with the fediverse is: how do you figure out where your content went, and how can I follow that conversation that now exists on multiple different servers?

Wants all replies in the same spot. That helps feel people in control.

This is actually a really good point imho. It's not just confusing that reply trees aren't eventually consistent across the fediverse, but it creates uncertainty because I don't even know what people say in response.

Johannes Ernst

Peter: one of the advantages of #ActivityPub is that you can limit exposure to other servers.

#AtProto is all public, and that's another reason why #ActivityPub is a better match for Meta.

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Rachel: re monitization, so far we are only focused on giving people a great experience on Threads

Going forward, they want to hear from lots of people and communities and regulators before they figure out what is acceptable and what not.

Peter: quotes a session from @fediforum where business models were discussed.

Mike: there will be many business models.

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Mike: "one of the original sins of the internet is that the relationship between the person and a website was not done at the protocol level. I see the fediverse with the ability to have a direct relationship as a core answer to them treating people with respect."

This is as close as a #VRM pitch as I have heard from somebody who hasn't been part of the VRM community! https://cyber.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page

Johannes Ernst

Peter is thanking the community working so well together and help debug bugs live!

"We are all on team fediverse!"

Johannes Ernst

Listen to the podcast yourself here: https://dot-social.simplecast.com/episodes/threads-OrGZJIHN

julian

@[email protected] said in Finally I'm getting around to listen to @mike 's Dot.Social episode with @rklambo and @pcottle from #meta, talking about #threads.:

Rachel: one of the challenges with the fediverse is: how do you figure out where your content went, and how can I follow that conversation that now exists on multiple different servers?

Something ForumWG is actively researching at present. A lot of the fediverse is built on reply chains, fragmented ones, but there's a better path forward, and we're figuring out just how to do it.

You shouldn't ever have to "view original post" except out of a sense of curiosity.

Johannes Ernst

@julian Where are you having that conversation?

julian

@[email protected] follow the category here: @[email protected] (although the handle will change at some point) for latest updates and discussion