Not much is really known about the Meta/Facebook product colloquially known as Threads (internally it’s known as Project92). What we do know is that it will presumably use ActivityPub and it will be a Twitter clone. That’s really all we know. The fact that Facebook is joining the Fediverse, concerns a lot of people. So much so in fact, that a few have vowed to defederate Facebook should they join. This movement is called the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact, and I should add it is antithetical to the mission of ActivityPub. Personally, I find it fascinating. For others, it’s validation:
From Kev Quirk one of the admins of Fosstodon shared an official stance on the subject:
Truth is, there isn’t that much info out there on how this thing will actually work, or what it will be capable of. Lots of people seem to be concerned about Facebook “getting their info”. Fact is, they can do that now if they really want to – it would be trivial for Facebook to stand something up that hoovers up all the public data that’s on the Fediverse, via API.
And that’s the clincher here – it’s all public data. So the best advice I can give if you’re concerned about your data, is lock down your account and don’t post publicly.
All that being said, here’s what we plan to do if this thing ever sees the light of day:
- As a team, we will review what the service is capable of and what advantages/disadvantages such a service will bring to the Fediverse
- We will then make a determination on whether we will defederate that service
- We will NOT jump on the bandwagon, or partake in the rumour mill that seems to be plaguing the Fediverse at the moment
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However, we don’t know what this thing is yet. Hell, we don’t even know if this thing will actually exist yet. So let’s just wait and see.
What if this thing ends up being a service that can allow you to communicate with your friends who still use Facebook, via the Fedi, in a privacy respecting manor. That would be pretty cool, I think; especially when you consider that one of the main concerns with new users on the Fedi is that they can’t find their friends.
It’s refreshing to hear a competent and cautiously optimistic take in the face of all the swirling rumors. There’s no reason to sound the alarm bells before we know anything definitive yet.