The benefits of Threads going fediversal
I think that Threads going fediversal will have ripple effects on the whole of the Fediverse. This is the first major social media that is joining the fray. Yesterday, @zuck@threads.net posted on his account this post:
“First post from the fediverse [sic]!” [Note 1]
This shows that the owner of Meta, while not pouring in efforts on his other social media, is invested in the fediverse. One of the reasons why one can suppose this to be true is relevant to why the Instagram team created Threads in the first place. During this time, Threads was a direct competitor to Twitter, which had just recently been acquired by Elon Musk. I would think that both the Instagram team and Zuckerberg made this in response to Musk's horrible treatment of X-formerly-known-as-Twitter. Now, federating Threads, even if it's one direction [Note 2], shows Musk that ol' Zuck is serious.
Another way to think about this is longevity and how much longer Zuck has been a social media CEO. Facebook, his first social media, was founded twenty years ago [Note 3], and has grown to be the most prevalent social media, with Zuck helming it the whole time. Musk, meanwhile, has no direct connection with X-formerly-known-as-Twitter, and seemed to bungle up this. While Meta HAS had its controversies, it's still overall the best of the social media companies. The spam on their main platforms is rampant, sure, yet Instagram and Facebook still are big players in the social media game. Zuck shows his sometimes faint appreciation for his customers by adding this value and attempting to add one of the tamest social media to the Fediverse.
I think that this'll have a great effect on the Fediverse as this is, after all, the first major player in terms of social media to join the Fediverse. Hopefully others, such as YouTube [Note 4] or other Meta sites, will follow suit. Fediversal admins in the meantime may very well defederate Threads to avoid being “tainted”, but I ask Milan here and other fediversal admins not to do so. After all, it is the future of the fediverse.
Notes: 1. @zuck. “First post in the fediverse”, Threads. https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/C4yMa0Gxxph. 21 March 2024. 2. Just to disclaim— it may very well be two-way. I haven't been able to test this, but it may not be. 3. “Facebook”, Wikipedia. 22 March 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook. Accessed 22 March 2024. 4. Although that might have to be like what Threads does to make it effective.
Thanks for reading