Meta previews “fediverse sharing” for topics

Meta continues its slow march towards fediverse compatibility. The company has been experimenting with serving posts from multiple accounts since late last year. Here’s a sneak peek at how the integration works and what it might look like once more people have the ability to share from Threads directly to fediverse.

Instagram engineer Peter Cottle gave a short presentation on “Fediverse Threads” on , a virtual event for decentralized social media enthusiasts. In the demo, Cottle explains how Threads users will be able to opt in to share fediverse and offers some insight into how Meta thinks about its role in fediverse.

In a short video demonstration, first from On the edge, Kottle shows a new account setting called “fediverse sharing”. As the name suggests, the menu will allow users to make their posts visible to Mastodon and other platforms that use ActivityPub. Notably, it also seems to come with lengthy disclaimers explaining exactly what this will mean for their content.

“I think it’s actually a little difficult for Threads because we have like 130 million people who use it monthly, but a lot of people haven’t heard of fediverse,” Cottle said. “But we want to give them the opportunity to enter into such an experience. So we have to both explain to fediverse and all the disclaimers and then make sure they feel good about the outcome.”

Visually, the fediverse will be represented in Threads by an icon that looks a bit like a planet (the symbol before in code in the application). Cottle explained that users who have enabled fediverse sharing will have the symbol visible on their profiles and that they will see an indication in the app’s composer if a post will be visible on fediverse. Cottle also confirmed that only public accounts will have the ability to share with fediverse. He also noted that users will have a 5-minute window before posts go live to make changes or edits, as Threads cannot guarantee that a deleted Threads post will also be deleted from fediverse.

The demo comes as Meta begins adding a few more accounts to its fediverse sharing experiment. Mastodon users can currently follow the boss on Instagram and a handful of other Threads users, but the company hasn’t provided an update on when the functionality will be more widely available. Cottle’s demo also doesn’t delve into how sharing from Mastoodn and other ActivityPub-enabled services can work in Threads. (Currently, if a Mastodon user replies to a Threads post, the reply is on Mastodon, not Threads.)

But Cottle’s demo is yet another sign that the Meta is embracing the growing momentum seriously. “I know there’s a lot of skepticism about threads going into the fediverse, that’s understandable,” Cottle said. “But I mean, I think everybody on the team has really good intentions. We really want to be a really good member of the community and give people the opportunity to experience what fediverse is and the power of a protocol.”