fediverse
Now Sharing to the Fediverse, My Threads Account
When I checked in on my Threads account recently, I saw that the Fediverse sharing feature was available and turned it on.
As you can see above, I've added my Threads account in the last available metadata entry on my primary Fediverse account. In testing the new link before publishing this post, I found that Ivory desktop and mobile clients appear to rewrite the link to @genxjamerican@www.threads.net (which doesn't work). Clicking the Open in Browser button that comes up after the first failed site visit gives you another rewritten URL, [www.threads.net/user/genx...](https://www.threads.net/user/genxjamerican#.) (which also doesn't work). When I visit my profile in a browser however (at https://hachyderm.io/@genxjamerican), clicking the Threads link takes me directly to the profile as expected.
A search for my handle in the Ivory desktop client now shows my Threads account and my Mastodon account. Only time will tell whether or not the anti-Meta fedi pact I posted about last year has a meaningful impact on the growth of Threads in the fediverse. Meta could just as easily sabotage its own growth through strategic errors. One of the fediverse's most consistent advocates and contributors, Dr. Jorge Caballero, makes a persuasive argument that paying for "good" Threads posts is one such mistake.
I haven't really set up anything to cross-post the same content to multiple social media accounts beyond what Jetpack Social supports. My blog posts are automatically posted to Tumblr and to my Mastodon account. I might change that just to see how different the levels of engagement are. IFTTT is probably where I should look first, having set up a bunch of automations there in the past. So far, when it comes to sharing posts from this blog, followers on Mastodon engage far more often with them than in any other social media network where I have a presence.
Flipboard Renewing Its Relevance With the Fediverse
Flipboard is jumping into the fediverse with both feet, according to a piece from The Verge. While the fediverse isn't where I saw the piece first (that would be on Threads), when Flipboard first announced it was experimenting with Mastodon some months back, it was the first time I'd thought about Flipboard in years (much less used it). Since The Verge piece first ran December 18th, it's been updated with links to both their Flipboard account, and their Mastodon account.
If you're not familiar with Flipboard, their key organizing principle is the magazine. Articles you read from any number of sources can be "flipped" into a magazine you create, along with any commentary you may want to provide. As in other social media networks, you can follow other members and be followed by them. You can comment on shared articles and other Flipboard members can respond. Another interesting feature (which I never took advantage of myself) is Invite contributors. I presume this feature allows multiple Flipboard members to contribute articles to the same magazine. This might be how The Verge handles its own presence on Flipboard.
Unrelated to the whole fediverse pivot, reviewing the features of Flipboard makes me wonder if they ever actively pursued the sorts of people who write newsletters. From what I've seen of Substack, I haven't seen anything it does as a service that Flipboard doesn't do as well or better--and they probably have a much larger number of monthly active users.
The key difference I've found so far between the mobile app experience and the web experience of Flipboard is that you can only flip articles into Mastodon via the mobile app.
Another thing Flipboard has changed since I last looked at what they were doing with Mastodon is allow you to add any Mastodon profile URL to your Flipboard profile and display a verified link on your profile page. I've already set that up and now my profile looks like this:
This is the sort of attention and interest that Tumblr could have generated had they moved more aggressively in exploring integration with the fediverse via ActivityPub. Tumblr is a first-class citizen on IFTTT, an awesome site for creating workflows and automations between a whole host of different services. I have a number of automations (IFTTT calls them applets) that use Tumblr as a destination and a "fedified" Tumblr would have let me automate a lot of posting without having to change a thing. Flipboard simply isn't set up for that--not without workarounds or hacks (though IFTTT appears to have one that uses Pocket as an intermediary that I plan to try).
If this post has piqued your curiosity about Flipboard's foray into the fediverse, I encourage you to check out Flipboard for yourself. Follow me there, comment on pieces I've flipped, create your own magazine(s), get the Flipboard mobile app and flip good pieces into Mastodon.
Farewell To Threads, And What Comes Next
I deleted my Threads account today. Meta's previous announcements about the end of third-party fact-checking and changes to moderation rules (to enable more abuse of people from marginalized communities on its platforms) and Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko speaking out regarding the danger of the changes prompted me to turn off the fediverse-sharing feature on my Threads account. At the time, I was unsure if I would continue to have a Threads account.
Meta's announcement today that they're immediately terminating DEI programs inside the company gave me the push I needed to delete my account from an app that frankly isn't that good. The tech industry I've worked in since before Facebook ever existed didn't treat people who weren't white and male very well for decades before that. DEI efforts across the tech industry were largely belated, token efforts at most companies, that didn't meaningfully increase the diversity of rank-and-file employees or leadership. Meta retreating from DEI feels like yet another slap at black folks who have already endured far more than enough between the death of affirmative action in higher education, a legal settlement that literally prevents black people from giving away their own money to black women the rest of the venture capital industry ignores, the outcome of the presidential election, and everything else that comes along with what we should have left behind from Trump's first term. I don't even want to imagine how awful it must have been for Meta's now-former chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, to see Mark Zuckerberg casually nuke a decade of her work.
What's next (as detailed in an earlier post) is more financial support for decentralized social media and efforts to create more hospitable online spaces for black folks (like Blacksky) and other marginalized communities that Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, (and others) have targeted for abuse. My Mastodon server (hachyderm.io) administrators opted to defederate from Threads in the interest of protecting their users who are part of marginalized communities. I expect many other Mastodon instances of varying sizes to follow suit, or apply some moderation to Threads accounts. Deleting other Meta accounts (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) is much harder than deleting Threads because of how many meaningful relationships I have with people that social media makes it easier to maintain. Perhaps this will be a year of seriously seeking alternatives--and making more efforts to connect in real life.