Threads is really coming to ActivityPub and Mastodon. This is huge!
Can't wait!

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/13/24000120/threads-meta-activitypub-test-mastodon

Loving this article! Thank you The Verge! Thank you David Pierce!

From: @verge
https://mastodon.social/@verge/111540555114789336

By Bart Decrem, co-founder

It’s been a year since we started working on Mammoth, and it’s been quite the year. Over at Twitter, the clown car has gone fully off the rails and the place has become the cesspool we all feared it might. 2024 is going to be the year even more people log off Twitter for good in search of smaller, healthier spaces where they can have authentic online conversations —Threads, BlueSky and especially Mastodon. The stakes will only get higher as we head into another divisive and high stakes US election season, the big social media companies fully embrace “synthetic media”🤮 and AI-powered deepfakes get ever more convincing.

We believe the future of social —and what comes next— is all about real people and is being built today on ActivityPub and Mastodon. Social needs to be an open protocol that anybody can build on, just like email or the open web. We believe this will happen in 2024 and all of our work is to bring about this open future faster. 

We’re delighted to launch Mammoth 2, completely open source as of tomorrow, the result of a year of hard work making Mastodon easy & fun for everyone to enjoy:

Simple onboarding to Mastodon

Getting started with Mastodon is now fast and simple. If you’ve installed any social app this year, you’ll feel right at home. With just a few clicks you can sign up and start connecting to people and interests. 🤩

Easily find and discover content 

If you’re just getting started on Mastodon, Mammoth makes it easy to find and engage with the people, topics, and trends you’re most interested in:

• Instant suggestions for people and accounts to follow: moth.social users will immediately see personalized suggestions on accounts to follow, so you can start building your network.
• Curated ‘Smart Lists’: Smart Lists are how we help people easily discover interesting conversations, organized by topic and handpicked by community leaders. Mammoth 2 comes with dozens of Smart Lists including Chris Messina’s /makers, Matthias Pfefferle’s /indieweb, Tim Chambers’ /activists, and Debora Giannini’s /apple and /mastodonitalia, to name just a few.
• The ‘For You’ Feed that Mastodon has been missing: We don’t have hundreds of engineers building the most addictive algorithms. Instead, our For You feed is powered by dozens of Smart Lists curated by passionate community members.

A source for trusted news

More people are turning to social media as a source for news, but platforms like Twitter are making it harder to find reliable information. We want Mammoth to be a place where people can easily find news from trusted sources, so we’re introducing a few new updates:

• Integration with Flipboard Desks: Flipboard’s curated editorial news desks, which cover the top stories of the day and investigative journalism, are now available to Mammoth users
• Newsmast and Press.coop Smart Lists: We’ve partnered with Newsmast, a leading curator of news and communities on Mastodon, and Press.coop, which imports feeds from popular news sites to Mastodon, to curate a number of Smart Lists in Mammoth 2 including /news, /worldnews, /business, /tech, /environment and /natures.

More ways to support

Mammoth continues to be completely free of charge, but we are now offering a subscription option for $2.99/month or $19.99 annually. Membership benefits include:

• A beautiful and fun collection of colorful and themed app icons (including Pride, Apple and many more!)
• Early access to new features
• Priority access for bug reports and technical support, incl. access to the Mammoth Gold discord
• Vote on new features
• Quarterly board meetings
• On the horizon: you’ll be helping us give back to the Mastodon community!

Have fun…and be cool!

To help promote a fun, safe and trusted environment on Mammoth, we’re introducing new content policies based on the best in class rules written by the team at Mozilla. We’re here to help millions more join the fediverse so our content guidelines are somewhat tighter than before. Trolls, hate mongers and spammers are encouraged to check out Twitter/x.

Mammoth is available in the App Store in the U.S. and internationally. The app works on all recent iPhone and iPad models and on Apple Silicon Macs and can be downloaded here. We’re excited for you to join us on this journey and look forward to your feedback – connect with us at @[email protected]. 

Support for Mammoth 2 from our community

Chris Messina, investor, product therapist, and hashtag inventor: “I first worked with Bart nearly 20 years ago on the launch of Firefox and subsequently a social browser called Flock. Many of the ideas we worked on then are being realized in Mammoth —which leverages technologies that resulted from those efforts. It’s incredible to finally realize the glimmers of a truly decentralized social web all these years later!”

Gregory Scallan, VP Engineering, Flipboard: “Mammoth is leading the charge when it comes to usability for mainstream users being able to discover content and people around their interests thanks to their use of Smart Lists. Kudos to the team on a fabulous release!”

Matthias Pfefferle, Open Web Lead, Automattic: “Mammoth is a great app for anyone who’s been intrigued by Mastodon but intimidated by how complicated it’s been. It’s a great way for more people to experience the benefits of open social and I’m excited to curate the /indieweb Smart List!”

Michael Foster, Co-founder, Newsmast: “I’ve admired Mammoth from the beginning, so we’re delighted to be working with Bart and the team to bring some of our curated communities to Smart Lists in Mammoth 2.”

Tim Chambers, Co-founder of Dewey Digital and author of the #XTwitterMigration Report: “In many ways the last two years of the Fediverse have seen more innovation than most of the closed social media silos have seen in the last 10. This is especially true with Mammoth, one of the first to integrate their client with their own server and do a Fediverse-friendly ‘For You’ algorithm. I’m especially excited about the innovation with this latest release including Smart Lists, combining hand-curated lists with smart software to surface the best content to the top.”

https://getmammoth.wordpress.com/2023/12/07/introducing-mammoth-2-the-easiest-way-quit-twitter-x-for-good-and-join-mastodon/