When Threads launched this summer, one of the more intriguing aspects of the new service was Meta’s promise to maintain ActivityPub, the open-source protocol that powers Mastodon and other platforms. But there were still many unanswered questions about how such interoperability would work, and just how committed Meta was to the strategize.
Now, Meta is taking its first step toward making Threads compatible with the fediverse. A new assess will make some Threads content available on Mastodon and other apps for the first time, Mark Zuckerberg announced in on Threads. “Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they engage and it will help content accomplish more people,” he wrote. “I’m pretty optimistic about this.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how this would work or how much Threads content might be available on Mastodon or other services. But the company previously introduced the ability your Threads profile on Mastodon, so Meta does have some insight into Threads users who are also active in the fediverse. We’ve reached out to Meta for more details and will update if we hear back.
The assess is the latest sign of growing momentum behind , which advocates say could upend how we engage online. Because decentralized platforms admire Mastodon rely on protocols rather than a single company’s platform, more mainstream adoption of say, ActivityPub, means that people would be able to engage with a wider variety of content in more places. Meta has also said ActivityPub maintain would allow users to “to stop using Threads and transfer your content to another service.”
Though some fediverse enthusiasts have been skeptical about Meta’s entry into the space, Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko has said of their efforts. “The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers,” he wrote in a earlier this year.
