this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Because Threads didn't federate. It turns out when they said that they'll federate, they actually meant "some time in the undisclosed future." And then Threads lost a lot of that initial marketing hype so everyone forgot about it.
Apparently Meta is currently testing federation for Threads, though? The problem about Threads federating isn't resolved, to be entirely clear. It was merely that everyone, Meta included, just decided to kick the can down the road and think about the issue later.
Who knew a company with an unhealthy obsession with harvesting every screen tap of data from every person using their services... would chicken out from connecting their servers to a bunch of clients they couldn't monitor.
... That said, I actually didn't see this coming. It baffles me that I didn't, but I didn't.
They didn't "chicken out", necessarily. It turns out that making huge social networks, and particularly for-profit ones, is not trivial. They connected a few accounts this week... but they also launched in the European Union this week, they weren't even out worldwide until now.
But hey, don't you worry, everybody is freaking out again. And if BlueSky ever finishes their own proprietary interoperability protocol and that is made AP-compatible on this end I'm sure we'll have another hipster breakdown.
As far as I know there is no intention to have Bluesky be proprietary in any way in the long run, just the philosophy is different and closer to P2P networks. For example migration is a big element of the design, unlike Mastodon. But at the moment it's still being built, hence why it looks much more proprietary for now.
ATProto is open source
They've honestly done exactly what they'd said they would so far. They always said it would federate eventually, but not at first. They were even clear about it with their early adopters/influencers. They later clarified that it would be in 2024 and they've just started a small trial of limited federation a few weeks early.
Mike Masnick has covered it a lot. He's consistently reported that they are surprisingly determined to federate. I don't think there's a downside for them. They aren't connecting either of their cash cows and Threads isn't a huge moneymaker for them. It seems more an opportunity to head off the EU regulators (and poke Twitter in the eye).
Thanks for the well-written explanation, stranger.
It gives them the ability to compile data on people of the fediverse, though. They might not get the same depth of information as if we used their websites directly, or nearly as much as from their apps, but they still get usernames and comments and whatever other data they can deduce from that from any instance they're federated with. Of course, if they were really interested they could just scrape it.
Also Threads is just incredibly corporate. There’s zero discoverability which means it’s all just celebrities and major news organisations, which isn’t a fun place to be for most people.