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Steve Troughton-SmithThreads may just be the bridge to corporations, celebrities, media, customer support et al that Mastodon may never pick up on its own. Entire communities that just have no interest in moving here. As long as it /remains/ open/interoperable, that's a good thing. Meta is free to do whatever it likes over there that would never fly here, but may be *necessary* to build a well-rounded service of the like that can fully replace what came before. Real content, not just bots that repost from elsewhere
Cabinet 20 🌱 
@stroughtonsmith For the tech side of Mastodon, I’m all good but I used to love the ability to contact companies when I had an issue, on Twitter. Linking with Threads might get me that back.
Tuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦@stroughtonsmith I actually really love this take and that makes me kind of excited to see Threads taking off. If only Mastodon admins will federate with them.
Josh@tuomas_h @stroughtonsmith I strongly disagree with all of the people saying “don’t federate with Meta, they’ll take all your data!”, meanwhile their profile is visible both openly on the web and likely accessible by meta anyway
@jawshoeadan This. It’s okay to have concerns but feels just spiteful to vow beforehand to not federate with them. Maybe we’ll at some point be in a situation where that’s necessary, but let’s just see their hand first.
Nora@tuomas_h @jawshoeadan why is it spiteful when meta has shown time and time again they can't be trusted? Federating with meta means that our data is on meta servers. Personally I came to mastodon to escape that bullshit. Meta can't be trusted after all they've done.l
@norapink @jawshoeadan If the founder and CEO of Mastodon is to be believed, the “other servers can’t be trusted” assumption is already built into Mastodon. They can’t get any more data than what’s already public anyway. https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/110664109379249958
James@stroughtonsmith agreed. I really think corps will make the switch quite quickly, Twitter is way too unpredictable for them I think.
Romolo S.@stroughtonsmith with Twitter “closed” and many agencies and emergency services there, it would make sense to have them in a public funded instance that could be visible to Threads and also Mastodon.
@stroughtonsmith Yeah, at this point it’s kinda proven that Mastodon on its own is too confusing for the general public, and as long as Threads remains open and gets that mainstream support, I’ll be happy with it. I HATE that companies I want to hear from or communicate with were only on twitter, so now hopefully that will change and I can follow them from my nice mastodon clients
Jason Petersen (he)@stroughtonsmith where are the bots? You mean journalists and things?
Those bots aren’t a failure of Mastodon, they’re an indictment of every person and outlet who remains on a right-wing platform dedicated to the eradication of trans people. They can leave any time, but they don’t.
@jason that's fine, but I'd rather follow e.g. NASA than a bot that reposts NASA. If you prefer the bots, go for it, but that doesn't make for a better service. You're painting virtually the entire world with one brush
@stroughtonsmith I’m saying those organizations should not be on twitter. Apple should not be making ad buys on twitter. I am painting an increasingly small part of the world with a single brush, but they picked the color, not me.
So yes, while I do of course detest Facebook, having a large network like this is… something. I’m not on the side of the defederators, I agree we should see how it all goes.
Steve Sebban, CSI@stroughtonsmith I totally agree with your take.
Lyons@stroughtonsmith does Mastodon need corporations, celebrities, media, customer support et al?
@lyonsinbeta that’s an empty question, because in this case Mastodon *isn’t* getting these things; Threads is. Mastodon users can /access/ them via that bridge, if they want, and that's a good thing. Unless, of course, militant admins hold their users hostage
@stroughtonsmith sorry, I guess I meant that I don't know if I agree that access to corporations and celebrities *is* a good thing. But personal preferences aside...
My pressing concern is what it will cost for the people who do want that bridge to have it. Will I have to see ads or will my data be hoovered up because a friend of a friend of a friend has a parasocial relationship with some streamer? That part isn't very clear yet afaik.
Chris Clarke@stroughtonsmith unfortunately it seems enough instances are taking an incredibly hard line that we won’t get a chance to see. The line appears to be your instance will either defederate Threads or it won’t be part of the fediverse. It’s too bad, because that seems the opposite of the whole choice thing I see thrown around here. It’s hardcore GNU attitude all over again.
Wilfried Klaebe@checlarke @stroughtonsmith OTOH, Meta is proven evil - why should anyone *not* try to block their attempts at Embrace Extend Extinguish?
@wonka @stroughtonsmith you’re free to ignore, and even block their server yourself. If activitypub is so brittle that a major player adopting it can extinguish the protocol, it’s probably not worth using anyway. But I’ll tell you what’s not reasonable - putting together a pact that requires admins to not only block Threads, but also to block instances that don’t block Threads. Might as well just say they you want individual bulletin boards.