Tim ChambersHard to overstate how important this news is. #Threads
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon
cc: @fediversenews
Evan Prodromou@tchambers @fediversenews so, Webfinger isn't working yet. Any other way to get to Threads Actor objects? I'd love to get this party started.
Nathan A. Stine@evan @tchambers @fediversenews I know that some of the folks at Mastodon are working with Meta devs on getting it to work, so stay tuned. You could reach out to @renchap if you want to assist.
Renaud Chaput@stinerman @evan @tchambers @fediversenews
[email protected] should have AP enabled, but we are seeing weird HTTP connection resets at the moment. We are working with Meta engineers to try to understand what happens. For now, things point to an blocklist not having been removed on their side when they opened it publicly.
@renchap @stinerman @tchambers @fediversenews Nice! I can see the Webfinger output for that account but not the corresponding ActivityPub actor.
0x1C3B00DA
Michael Bishop ☕I don't trust Meta on this. They will try to take control of it all.
Fortunately no need to trust anyone. This plan remains my best thinking on how to both welcome the Fediverse to such partners but also protect it. https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/06/23/project-and-the.html
Threads and the Fediverse - A Smarter Battle Plan to Protect the Open Social Web
With the #meta #Project92 or #Threads Fediverse offering, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it. ➡️ To avoid data mining … However, defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the Fediverse public social graph today - Want proof? See here: is.gd/q8U2pv But what if they merge that Fediverse data with their own internal data from IG isn’t that worse than just scraped data?
Deadly Headshot@tchambers
XMPP didn't die, it just went small again. This is the best we can hope for with the fediverse, should threads succeed with EEE tactics...
@MichaelBishop @fediversenews
XMPP didn't die, it just went small again. This is the best we can hope for with the fediverse, should threads succeed with EEE tactics...
@MichaelBishop @fediversenews
@dheadshot @MichaelBishop @fediversenews
I specifically argue in the link in my post the only real defence against EEE.
Virtue signal 💉💉💉🇺🇸 🇺🇦@MichaelBishop @tchambers @fediversenews
I agree. For one, the "View On Threads" button in every post suggests they are doing EEE – embrace, extend, extinguish.
This kind of behavior should result in automatic defederation.
#threads #defederate #eee
@MichaelBishop @tchambers @fediversenews There should not be any aspect of Threads federation that includes any hint or suggestion that the posts are "properly" viewed on Threads.
Ben Ramsey@tchambers @fediversenews Can we follow anyone from threads.net yet?
crossgolf_rebel - kostenlose Kwalitätsposts@crossgolf_rebel @fediversenews
Both risks and opporunities with it to be sure. My thoughts remain as they were here:
https://www.timothychambers.net/2023/06/23/project-and-the.html
Threads and the Fediverse - A Smarter Battle Plan to Protect the Open Social Web
With the #meta #Project92 or #Threads Fediverse offering, there has been a, well, robust discussion of how to avoid threats looming. Those advocating mass-preemptive defederation make three cases for it. ➡️ To avoid data mining … However, defederation does virtually zero to avoid any big tech entity scraping all the Fediverse public social graph today - Want proof? See here: is.gd/q8U2pv But what if they merge that Fediverse data with their own internal data from IG isn’t that worse than just scraped data?
WndlB@tchambers @crossgolf_rebel @fediversenews At least in my experience, it's a pretty well-behaved place. Except for the lingerie followers, like old Twitter.
@wndlb It was much better here than on the best Twitter of all time.
Now, unfortunately, it's just a copy of that
@tchambers @[email protected]
Now, unfortunately, it's just a copy of that
@tchambers @[email protected]
David Carroll@tchambers When they say you “can’t post to Threads” do you think they really mean that a Threads user would have to boost a Mastodon post into the Threads instance? So more just a misunderstanding of how federation works?
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)@profcarroll
Apparently their plan is to roll it out incrementally -- Evan described it as "First read-only, then with likes and shares, then replies, then two-way follow."
https://cosocial.ca/@evan/111567567468691751
[No, I don't know what "read-only" means.]
Evan Prodromou (@[email protected])
@[email protected] sure. Threads fediverse support is going to be rolling out in stages over the next year. First read-only, then with likes and shares, then replies, then two-way follow. They are mostly concerned about privacy for Threads users, so they won't be federating in ways that put that privacy at risk.
@profcarroll We're all reading tea leaves. My take is that in an early stage posts from Threads will federate OUT, but posts from the Mastodon/etc Fediverse will not federate IN to Threads -- for that early phase. (Which makes sense from a dev POV)
Crawl, walk run.
So replies back to Threads posts from the Fedi, and DM's to Threads users from the Fedi would not be seen by Threads users initially.
Felipe 
Sami Juvonen@tchambers @fediversenews I already experienced the September That Never Ended. Bring it on.
Too bad our client software filtering and blocking capabilities are far far below what could be done in Usenet clients back in the day.
What are the most important missing elements you see, Sami?
@tchambers @fediversenews I’ve been meaning to do a dive into news readers of old, because the conceptual overlap between usenet and fediverse is interesting (to me).
Admittedly it’s been some time, but I remember newsreader killfiles (reminder to not let engineers name things) being able to express things like “I don’t want to see Mallory’s responses to Zach when the subject line mentions horses, unless it’s about horsepower measurements”. Or kill [sic] any mention of Elon Musk unless it’s accompanied by the words spacex or indictment, and if the latter, boost it to the top of my feed.
Now we’re just blocking words wholesale like some bronze age peasants.
petersuber@sjuvonen @tchambers @fediversenews
Yes. I want that. I also want the ability to block complex boolean combinations of words. Above all, I I want the ability to block *concepts*, using future versions of today's #AI / #LLM tools. For example, block anything about sports, celebrities, or cooking, and don't make me figure out which words to block to get the job done.
Yes. I want that. I also want the ability to block complex boolean combinations of words. Above all, I I want the ability to block *concepts*, using future versions of today's #AI / #LLM tools. For example, block anything about sports, celebrities, or cooking, and don't make me figure out which words to block to get the job done.
deutrino@petersuber @sjuvonen @tchambers @fediversenews pluggable filters on fedi ... pluggable filters on fedi ... pluggable filters on fedi
plot twist 2038: @deutrino finally gets his life together and implements pluggable filters on fedi, then dies the next day
lampsofgold@deutrino @petersuber @sjuvonen @tchambers Is there somewhere someone is working on this already ? I wouldn't want to duplicate the effort but it would be fun to work on I think
@lampsofgold @petersuber @sjuvonen @tchambers not that I know of on a user-pluggable level (Pleroma/Akkoma's MRF would otherwise count?)
I'm also not fully caught up with the fedi development scene at all though, been too preoccupied. so I may be wrong.
Kevin Davidson@sjuvonen @tchambers @fediversenews My favourite, by far, was Gnus, which supported very flexible post scoring, adding or decreasing weight based on different properties of the post. Highly scored articles stood out, low scored ones vanished. Much better than killfiles or ungainly muting of keywords.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Scoring.html
@MetalSamurai @tchambers @fediversenews Yeah Gnus is really in a class of its own. Also using it meant dedicating your life to it to the extent of using it for email and anything else you could look from a certain angle as an NNTP feed.
@sjuvonen @tchambers @fediversenews Yes. I used it for email as well. Had it all integrated with my contacts in BBDB and syncing to my Palm Pilot. Out there somewhere in an elisp archive is my code to automate PGP signing and encryption for known contacts when emailing via Gnus.
draNgNon@tchambers
my concern is I am not sure instance moderators on Fedi yet have the moderation tools so desparately needed for this volume
Speaking for myself (I run Indieweb.social) we have prepped 3X the moderation resources as normal. But also from what I read in the tea leaves, this is a gradual roll out over a good deal of time.
CindyGHey, curious... Have there been any updates wrt security of Threads (.net)?
One finding:
"Being such a modest website in terms of functionality, Threads is a gift to scammers. Our experts have already discovered phishing pages imitating the web version of the social network and collecting users’ logins and passwords — which match at least the login data for Instagram"
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/threads-privacy-questions/48630/
Matunos@CindyG @tchambers @fediversenews honestly I won't be surprised if that's an even bigger problem with Mastodon itself (especially when users cross instance boundaries and don't realize it), but it just hasn't been as big of a target to date
@tchambers @fediversenews can't wait for all those users bound by algorithmic feeds to descend upon us (i can in fact wait)
alastair87 (old account)@tchambers @[email protected] Embrace, extend, extinguish. Meta aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they're trying to establish some degree of control.
@alastair @fediversenews My post I linked to addresses that….
Mastodon MigrationSo basically one way cross-posting from Threads to the Fediverse... for now, trust us. Kind of like an RSS feed. No ability to comment back from Mastodon, and no ability to post on Threads from Mastodon. If you want to respond to something you see from Threads, you will need to create a Threads account and go there. Seems like a pretty obvious Threads marketing initiative and a play to undermine the Fediverse. Kind of as predicted, this is not "federation".
Mike@mastodonmigration interesting… you’re not wrong here. But it’s not like mastodon users don’t already know about threads. If it was so good we’d already be there in full yeah? I see even just this functionality as just more capabilities for us.
A lot of people trying to find ways this is explicitly malicious. Honestly I think the reason threads federates and why meta is interested in doing so is because it further cements them as the best platform. Twitter will continue its decline & they win.
Not really malicious, but also not federation. We already have no reply accounts mirrored here from Twitter, so what's the difference?
@mastodonmigration Well it’s an “official” mirror rather than un-official. But I like having the read-only Twitter capability here for the like two important accounts I still want to follow. I see this as a good thing and don’t think it would be a meaningful way for them to poach fedi users. They may have some seedy intentions in mind that we can’t pinpoint yet but I don’t think trying to get the couple million people who regularly use mastodon to come over is of much concern to them.
@mastodonmigration @fediversenews
True. Not yet. But if I were planning how to do ActivtyPub support at scale, this is a smart way to phase it in. But again, you are correct: untill it is done, it is not done.
David B. HimselfOne good thing about this. At least... for now... we don't have to worry about our content getting scooped up by Meta and subjected to their terms of service whereby they claim a full license to everything.
Jeff Kart@tchambers @fediversenews Threads is Google+. Twitter is dying. TikTok is a spy app. Hello Mastodon.
Kieran Kelly@justin I’m very interested in how this comes about and how Meta allows it to happen.
I am hoping it’s just a single sign on to a Mastodon server, but I just don’t see it being that easy.
Really looking forward to it though.