Fediverse support in Meta Threads working in beta version. Mark Zuckerberg he wrote Adult Threads users in eligible countries can now enable sharing with fediverse, including Thursday Mastodon and other ActivityPub services. Before today’s wider beta release, it was Meta cross-platform compatibility testing by several accounts since late last year.
Fediverse is a collection of decentralized online communities (servers) that speak the common “language” of ActivityPub. This allows each hub to maintain its own rules and members, while allowing posts, likes, and other content to be visible to others. When did the meta promise to support fediverse? The topics started last year.
One post Since December, Zuckerberg has described the integration as a way to allow the young platform’s content to reach more eyeballs. “Having topics interact will give people more choices in how they interact, which will help content reach more people,” he said. “I’m pretty optimistic about it.”
The feature is connectivity. If you enable fediverse sharing, people on other ActivityPub servers can search and follow your profile, view and interact with your posts, and share them with users in the (or any other) eligible fediverse community. Their interactions will be shared with Threads.
While cross-platform compatibility is in beta, there are some limitations. While likes from different platforms will appear in Threads, replies and follows from those communities will not. Additionally, polls and posts with response control cannot be shared with non-Threads communities. So, so far the integration does little more than push Threads posts to the Mastodon and other fedivers communities along with a few additions.
You can enable the feature in the Threads app. Head Account Settings > Fediverse sharing and follow the instructions to log in and check out. Meta says the trial is only available in the US, Canada and Japan.
