A few days after Meta shared a demonstration of the integration of Threads in the fediverse, the company has taken the following steps in its decentralized social experiment. Starting this week, users of the app over 18 years old and residents of the United States, Canada or Japan can now share their posts on Threads with servers compatible with ActivityPub.
Threads users who meet the requirements can now display their content on other decentralized social apps and tools, such as Mastodon and WordPress. Users of these services will be able to follow, like, and respond to Threads posts without needing a Threads account, providing more reach and engagement options derived from the Threads experience.
However, integration does have several limitations at the moment. Apart from regional restrictions, Threads users will also not be able to see who has liked their messages in this initial phase, nor the responses from people in the fediverse on the app.
Meta also points out that there are certain types of messages and content that are not yet federated, such as messages with restricted replies, replies to non-federated messages, posts with polls, and reposts of non-federated posts, among others. Quoted messages will also not work, as they are not compatible with ActivityPub, while messages containing links will have an attached link at the end, according to the protocols.
Users who meet the requirements will be able to activate the option “Share on the fediverse” in the Threads settings, which will now also include a brief explanation of what the fediverse is and how it works.
With the option to share in the fediverse enabled, users will be able to publish on services that use ActivityPub. Threads delays publication in the fediverse for five minutes, giving time to edit or delete the post before distribution. Profiles with this feature will have a “pill” icon, indicating the possibility of accessing users’ fediverse usernames.
