Meta’s X competitor, Instagram Threads, is making it easier for users to access their fediverse settings from a single URL. Or rather, it’s making it easier for someone else to ask them to turn on fediverse sharing on their account. Now, instead of someone posting a request to turn on sharing, they can link to a URL with some kind of description, which will pop up an option to enable the Threads feature with one click.
The new option was demonstrated and launched live on Thursday at FediForum, an online “non-conference” for people developing and learning about fediverse and related technologies, including protocols like ActivityPub, AT Protocol (the foundation of social networking startup Bluesky), and Nostr (a favorite of Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey).
Fediverse sharing (which means sharing Threads posts to the open social web, including Mastodon and other services powered by the ActivityPub protocol) is a key differentiator for Threads. Not only does it give Threads users a wider reach for their content, but it also represents a significant effort by Meta’s engineering team to build using an open protocol that works with other services, rather than locking people completely into their own platform.
However, fediverse sharing is not turned on by default in Threads. This is why many people do not understand what it is or why it should be enabled. This has led to other people evangelizing fediverse in replies on popular Threads accounts, which in turn has led to requests for accounts to turn sharing on.
When fediverse sharing is enabled, Threads users can simultaneously publish content to Meta’s own app and the open social web. This is possible because Threads uses ActivityPub, a service created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is designed to communicate with other fediverse servers that support it, such as Mastodon or WordPress.
The long-term goal is to enable Threads users to interact with the wider open social web, and vice versa, but this is an ongoing process.
Threads users' profiles can now be followed by people in the fediverse, and later Threads users can follow back. They can also see replies and likes from fediverse users on their posts. Recently, Threads added the ability to see fediverse replies on other people's posts, and the ability to syndicate content to fediverse via the Threads API for third-party applications.
Given the wider reach that fediverse sharing offers, most users will likely want to turn it on, but some may have trouble figuring out how to do so in Settings. We’re making it easier for users to make that request with a new, easy-to-share URL: https://www.threads.net/settings/account/fediverse . When you ask users to turn on fediverse sharing and then point to the URL, a pop-up will appear with the exact settings to enable the feature.
It's a small step forward, but it shows that Meta's engineering team is paying attention to how the Fediverse community is trying to inform Threads users about the possibilities.
