On March 21, Meta’s Threads entered the fediverse. This means that people on other ActivityPub-powered platforms, like Mastodon, can follow federated Threads profiles and see, like, reply to, and repost posts from the fediverse. (Eventually, you’ll be able to follow other fediverse accounts from Threads, too.) It’s still early days, but Threads’ entry shows the ecosystem coming together at a larger scale, starting with the promise of interoperability. Threads’ presence in the fediverse has been the elephant in the room since it was announced in July 2023. Now that it’s actually happening, there is as much skepticism as excitement. Why is Meta doing this? How are they working with the community to get it right? And what do they have to say about concerns about their involvement?In this episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue talks to two key leaders tasked with building the Threads experience: Rachel Lambert, Director of Product Management, and Peter Cottle, Software Engineer. Both are long-time Meta employees with a genuine care for open-source software and communities, as well as trust and safety. In fact, Rachel launched the Oversight Board, which helps Meta be accountable for trust and safety decisions across its social apps. Highlights of this conversation:• Meta’s motivations• How foundational is the fediverse for Threads (vs. it being a “feature”)• Deciding to use ActivityPub instead of another protocol• Threads’ roadmap and next step• Addressing community concerns around seriousness of investment, moderation, monetization and more• Future of interoperability within Meta? You can follow Rachel at @rklambo@threads.net and Peter at @pcottle@threads.net✚ You can follow Mike on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social and @mike@flipboard.com, and on Threads at @mmccue@threads.net? To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the Fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave
? To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: https://appdownload.flipboard.com/a-new-wave/