Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads app will eventually support cross-communication with Mastodon, which could help both social networks beat Twitter. But not everyone is a fan of the idea.
A growing number of Mastodon admins and moderators are vowing to not connect their servers to Threads and other Meta projects that try to join Mastodon’s decentralized social network.
The Mastodon admins have jopined the so-called Anti-Meta Fedi Pact, which seeks to derail the company’s entry into Mastodon’s network. The creator of the pact, Vantablack, points to Meta’s allegedly “long track record of pure evil,” which has involved failing to stop misinformation, hate speech, and calls for violence, along with the company’s myriad of privacy scandals. “Which brings us to the need many feel to protect ourselves from this insidious megacorp,” she wrote.
Vantablack essentially fears that unsavory content from Threads, such as harassment, will be able to easily flood the fediverse. Meta’s privacy policy also indicates content from Mastodon that appears on Threads will be collected, including users’ IP addresses, enabling the company to data-mine and surveil them for advertising purposes.
“The fediverse is good precisely because distributed moderation makes it possible to filter out bad shit easier,” she added. “That all goes out the window the moment Meta sets foot here and people refuse to block them because ‘that's where everyone is.’”
Threads plans on joining Mastodon's network and others, such as WordPress, by supporting the ActivityPub protocol, which Mastodon servers also use. When that’ll happen remains unclear. Meta has only said it’ll happen “soon.” But in the meantime, Vantablack is trying to rally the Mastodon community into blocking interoperability between both platforms.
Over 500 admins and moderators have already added their names to the pact. But it looks like the major Mastodon servers have yet to join. In the meantime, the social network’s founder Eugen Rochko has responded to the concerns about Threads, saying the decentralized nature of Mastodon makes it easy for servers to deny the cross-communication.
“We expect that eventually Mastodon and Threads will be interoperable, and from a technical standpoint, users will be able to follow each other and exchange messages,” he wrote. “However, it is up to the operator of the Mastodon server you’re are using to decide whether to allow communication with Threads or not.”
Rochko also said Thread’s upcoming support for ActivityPub represents a “clear victory” in Mastodon’s effort to push the tech industry from locking users into one platform. Meta itself has stated once Threads integrates the ActivityPub protocol, its users will be able to migrate their accounts to another compatible social network.
“The fact that large platforms are adopting ActivityPub is not only validation of the movement towards decentralized social media, but a path forward for people locked into these platforms to switch to better providers,” Rochko added.