this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I played around with it and it’s basically useless without a follower only feed. And the posts tend to just basically disappear forever after a feed refresh.
But if they follow through on ActivityPub integration I’ll be stoked to follow all the normies that couldn’t get by on mastodon that are using threads. More content = more better.
I won't be happy if they integrate federation. Ever heard the phrase "embrace, extend, extinguish"? It's a tactic used by large companies to squash growing competition.
Google used it, for example, to squash a growing open-source chat messenger protocol called XMPP. (Think of XMPP like ActivityPub.) Google allowed its Google Talk application to integrate with people using XMPP. (They embraced XMPP.)
Then, they added their own proprietary features that wouldn't work with normal XMPP users. (They extended, or built on top of, XMPP.)
Then, they cut support for XMPP integration, leaving it effectively dead in the water. XMPP users suddenly had a list of Google Talk users in their friend list who would never appear online again, whereas Google Talk users maybe had one or two people in their friend list who looked like they'd moved on from Google Talk. (They extinguished XMPP.)
Now imagine that happening with Threads. You, a Mastodon user, follow a bunch of people who just happen to be on Threads. There are some things Threads users can do that you can't, but you don't really mind. It works well enough. Then, one day, Threads stops working with Mastodon. Suddenly, over half of the people you followed are no longer available to you. The only way you can follow them again... is to join Threads.
I would compare Mastodon with Threads to Linux with the Wine compatibility layer.
People used to hold off on using Linux, because they did not want to lose their Windows software. Now with Wine, people are a lot less reliant on Windows and many Linux users and Microsoft competitors profit from this.
The Steam Machine was reliant on native Linux games, but almost nobody wanted to develop for a niche desktop OS, which led to less games on the platform, which made Linux even more niche for gamers ....
That's a big reason the Steam Machine failed.
The Steam Deck side-steps all of this with Wine. Now Linux can grow freely, even when developers ignore Linux completely. Wine gives Linux a fighting chance against Windows.
The same way I believe, that Mastodon will only get a fighting chance, if they can side-step the "nobody I know uses Mastodon" problem. Federation with Threads could be one solution to this.
The thing with Wine is that, from what I understand, it was made to help Windows software run on Linux. From the beginning, its primary intention was to help Linux users. Facebook's primary intention is to get more money. If they believe extinguishing Mastodon will further that goal, they'll do it. Unfortunately, I don't believe Mastodon is big enough to make Thread users think they'll be missing any significant amount of content if Facebook removed ActivityPub support.