Threads integration into fediverse — how it will work

An engineer at Meta’s Threads has recently shown how integrating the platform into the fediverse will work.

The fediverse has accumulated a population of just over 13 million users and over 18,000 servers, according to Fediverse Party.

Threads has been testing compatibility with the fediverse since the end of last year as the social media giant slowly moves towards its interoperability promise.

Instagram chief, Adam Mosseri assured that Threads would eventually be made compatible with ActivityPub, before it was released.

ActivityPub is an open, decentralised social networking protocol used to connect platforms in the fediverse.

Threads interoperability

Peter Cottle, a Threads engineer, shared a demonstration of how Threads users can access the fediverse and some disclaimers to bear in mind.

“We have 130 million people using [Threads], but a lot of people haven’t heard of the fediverse, and don’t know what ActivityPub is,” Colter explained in the demo.

“But we want to give them the ability to enter that type of experience.”

Threads will inform users that their profiles must be public to enable the feature.

Users are also warned that deleting a post on Threads does not guarantee deletion elsewhere in the fediverse — though well-behaving nodes should honour deletion requests.

Threads will offer a five-minute window to delete after posting.

When a user has activated Fediverse Sharing, a planet symbol will appear next to their profile.

This will indicate to other fediverse users that interacting with the post will appear across the fediverse.

Currently, only certain accounts have access to Fediverse Sharing, including Mosseri, whose posts can be viewed on Mastodon, the largest fediverse platform.

The Fediverse

The fediverse is an ensemble of several open, decentralised social media platforms boasting interoperability between one another.

The name “fediverse” is a combination of “federal” and “universe”.

Instead of each platform having set rules and policies that all have to adhere to, each platform is divided into servers created by users who set their own community standards.

These servers are called instances or nodes and are interconnected (or “federated”), allowing users to determine their own social media experience while still being able to view posts by users on other instances.