There’s been a lot of speculation around what Threads will be and what it means for Mastodon. We’ve put together some of the most common questions and our responses based on what was launched today.
I’m still pretty much “wait and see” on this. A lot of folks are predicting gloom and doom, but also have a lot of good points. Meta shouldn’t be trusted in general, but they also haven’t done anything yet - they haven’t even implemented ActivityPub yet.
I think it’s more they’re trying to make a Twitter-killer then kill Mastodon from the inside. They want people on their site so they can show them ads, and they want to get those people from Twitter. ActivityPub integration is another feature they can use to get attention.
A company exists to make money - period. I struggle to see why Meta making money off ActivityPub is a good thing.
There’s just no good reason to have a profit motive in social media when it simply doesn’t need to be there.
I think it’s more they’re trying to make a Twitter-killer then kill Mastodon from the inside.
This is the answer. They aren’t stupid, they know that if they just spin up a Twitter clone, nobody will use it. They need a reason to exist. Honestly I don’t think they give a single shit about Mastodon or killing it. But what ActivityPub does, is get them an instant content base. And if they are building their own AI, it’s a whole lot of live conversation for them to train it on.
It also gives them an edge over Bluesky, since no where else is using the Bluesky protocol yet, whereas ActivityPub has all these sites also using it and populated.
Threads wants to be there place where everyone is happening and everyone feels like they need to be, like Twitter was and Bluesky is starting to be. Mastodon was never that. Mastodon, to them, is a tool to use against Twitter and Bluesky for that pop culture spot, not a rival.
They’re implementing it, but no it currently isn’t using the ActivityPub protocol
ActivityPub integration is another feature they can use to get attention.
See, that’s what I don’t understand. ActivityPub means nothing to the vast majority of potential Threads users. There’s no way that Meta is going to use ActivityPub to gain users; all they have to do is what they HAVE done, leverage Instagram. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they may be hoping that federation will allow them to get around the EU’s limitations.
But even that doesn’t really make sense. Zuck doesn’t really care that much about regulations. He breaks them all the time. Which leaves me with the question, why ActivityPub? What aren’t we seeing?