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Topics joined Fediverse. Here’s what that means for you

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The “fediverse” is a collection of social media platforms that can talk to each other. Meta announced on March 21 that Threads would be Join fediverse. With l Over 130 million monthly active usersThreads exposes millions of people to diversity.

Don’t panic — the way you use your Threads account won’t change. This just means that you will have more opportunities to share your posts more widely, especially with another popular platform in the federation, Mastodon. Eagle-eyed Threads users recently spotted President Biden’s Topic Account And take advantage of the new feature.

Signing up for diverse sharing on Threads is easy. But when you dig a little deeper into what sharing Meta with federated spells means for the future of decentralized, open source social media…well, that’s when things get complicated.

Here’s what you need to know about fediverse, and how to change your thread settings to enable fediverse sharing.

Read more: What to know about the proposed TikTok ban

What is federalism?

fediverse is the term given to federated social media platforms that belong to a larger group or organization. Unified social media platforms come together under a combination of open source and decentralization ActivityPub ProtocolsHe built it The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.

These protocols are a set of rules that define the way social media sites are built and engineered behind the scenes. Social media applications that use these protocols can speak each other’s language, making it easier to share content across them. Think about email: You can read an email sent from your friend’s Yahoo account even if you use Gmail, no problem. This is because email servers run on similar protocols, so they appear the same way across clients.

With the federated system, ActivityPub protocols organize social media posts so that posts from one social media platform can be remembered and shared on another. Currently, the largest platforms in the world are Mastodon, Threads, and WordPress (via plugins). So you can share your topic posts directly to any Mastodon servers and other unified platforms like Focus Images pixelvid Focus on video Pertube.

But there’s something important to note about Diversity — it’s built on the idea of ​​being open source and decentralized. That’s why Mastodon is usually discussed at the same time as federation – before Threads, Mastodon was the largest platform in federation and is a decentralized social platform, meaning it doesn’t run on one main website. Alternatively, you can choose to join individual servers (also referred to as instances). You can follow and interact with people from other servers, but there is no one main website for all Mastodon users.

What does it mean to join fediverse on Threads

If you use Threads, you can now choose to opt in to federal participation. If you do this, your Threads account and posts will be discoverable on all federal platforms, exposing your posts more widely. You can post to threads, and people can like, reply, and repost on Mastodon.

Two screenshots of Threads' various sharing warnings

This is a meta-interpretation of diverse participation. Note that we cannot guarantee that your posts will be deleted.

Screenshot by Caitlin Chedraoui/CNET

The ultimate hope is that people will be able to access content from the platforms without having to sign up for accounts, Mita wrote in an article. Blog post. When federal sharing is turned on, Meta prominently displays its legal warning that it “cannot supervise or control what happens to your content on other servers” once it is shared outside of threads. Meta also warns that it is only possible Deletion request Your content from servers located in the Federal Union, rather than guaranteed deletion.

Meta will influence the future of the federation, but we don’t know how

Currently, the biggest social media platforms using the ActivityPub protocol are Threads and Mastodon, so if you’re not currently using those sites, this won’t affect you. Even if you are a user, cross-posting is optional.

What’s most interesting about fediverse and Thread’s decision to join forces is what this tells us about the future of text-based social media. Since users began fleeing X (formerly Twitter), a number of contenders have tried to claim the crown of number one microblogging site. Mastodon and Bluesky are popular alternatives on Twitter, and Threads became another serious player when Meta launched it in July 2023.

According to Meta exec Adam Mosseri, work began to begin integrating Threads within ActivityPub’s protocols late last year. He wrote in A string The rollout process will likely take a full year, as has been the case in Meta systems “historically.” [haven’t] “It was designed with this use case in mind.”

The future of decentralized, open source social media is a hot topic among experts and users, to say the least. Some Federal fans have Expressed concern That meta, perhaps even unintentionally, may crush the network you want to join. Or as one former ActivityPub technologist and open source advocate put it, Meta might be more interested in it Colonialism, not integration, federalism. Suffice it to say, it will be interesting to see how Mita’s entry into the Federation will be received in the long term and what it means for their future.

How to enable cross-publishing on Threads and Mastodon

Meta is rolling out federated threads in phases. In the initial stage, you will have to choose to share your topics across other unified social media platforms. Here’s how.

1. Open topics.
2. Go to your profile.
3. Click on the two lines at the top of your profile picture.
4. On mobile, tap account. On the desktop, click Settingsthen account.
5. handle Diverse participation. Read Meta’s disclosures.
6. handle the next.
7. handle Turn on sharing.

There are some restrictions on what can be published at this initial stage. You will need to have a public profile. Topics cannot be cross-posted if they contain images, polls, restricted replies, or if they are reposts from people who have not subscribed. This may change as the Meta rolls out updates. In my experience, federating wasn’t instantaneous — it took about 15 minutes for one of my thread posts to load in my Mastodon feed.

Screenshot of Mastodon's social media feed Screenshot of Mastodon's social media feed

Below is an example of my posts shared in the federation, specifically on Mastodon. You can tell this from my Threads account by looking at the username format.

Screenshot by Caitlin Al-Shadrawi

Your Threads account will be searchable across the federation using the format “[your-Threads-username]@threads.net”. Posts you share on threads from now on will be discoverable in federation (your posts will not be discoverable before sharing is enabled). You can see which posts have been shared in federation by looking for the planet and orbit icon to determine your federation status This is how we know that the President of the United States entered the Confederacy, without an official statement from the White House.

Screenshot of post about Emily Henry and Taylor Swift Screenshot of post about Emily Henry and Taylor Swift

This was my first post on topics shared across the EU, as indicated by the icon in the top right corner.

Screenshot by Caitlin Al-Shadrawi

Be aware that if you choose to turn off federal sharing, you will have to wait 30 days before you can turn it back on.



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