Meta (the corporation behind Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram) created a new platform called Threads. It’s basically a Twitter with Zuckenberg instead of Elon Musk. And Meta said that it wants to use the ActivityPub protocol in Threads.

ActivityPub is the protocol used by Mastodon instances to talk with each other. For example, you can post from mastodon.social and someone in social.vivaldi.net can read it and reply, or vice versa. So as soon as Threads uses the ActivityPub protocol, those Mastodon instances will be able to talk with Threads and vice versa.

That sounds good, right? Well… no. Meta, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, they’re that sort of nasty business that doesn’t play by the rules. Odds are that Meta is trying to use a shitty strategy called Embrace, Extend, Extinguish towards Mastodon. For example, here’s what Meta could do:

• enable ActivityPub protocol in Threads. Mastodon users access Threads content and vice versa. Use this to kickstart Threads’ userbase and seed its initial content.
• make a few divergent changes in Threads, that give Mastodon users a harder time accessing content in Threads than the opposite. So Mastodon users are encouraged to create Threads accounts.
• when there are considerably more people using Threads than Mastodon, Meta “pulls off the plug” of ActivityPub, denying Mastodon users the Threads content that they were able to access. Now Mastodon becomes a ghost town, because most of its users and content are in Threads.

I’m using Mastodon as example but note that this also affects Lemmy. Because Lemmy itself also uses the ActivityPub protocol - it’s pretty much the reason why you can post in lemmy.world, and I can comment to your post in lemmy.ml. So, once Threads implement the ActivityPub, you’ll see Threads leaking into Lemmy too. And in the rest of the Fediverse.

And now all that “facebook stuff” discussion going on is about ways to prevent Meta from ruining Mastodon and potentially the rest of the Fediverse.