Joe Biden's official account is now connected to the Fediverse, thanks to Threads. We'll see if anything comes of it.

Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.

leadore
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I don’t consider being on Threads as being “on the fediverse”. My definition of the fediverse is servers that follow the Activity Pub protocol to interact with each other. You might disagree with that definition, but Threads only lets us “follow” (view-only) certain of their accounts (only about 2000 out of millions) from Mastodon. Those accounts do not see any replies to their post from the fediverse, or any fediverse posts at all for that matter–we are invisible to them. So no, he’s not “on the fediverse”, he’s on Threads. I doubt he knows the fediverse even exists.

Sean Tilley
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Thing is, for federation to work, his team had to opt into it. The fact that his statuses and profile render natively in Mastodon and Akkoma are a pretty strong start.

I’d like to see Meta put their money where their mouths are, and finish the integration. I think we’ll probably see that happen sooner rather than later.

leadore
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Personally I hope they never do, though it does look likely. Like many pre-November '22 old-time Mastodon et.al. fedizens, I came to the fediverse specifically because I didn’t want to have anything with FB/Meta/Twitter or the other commercial, “engagement”-based, enshittified social media.

It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified, with half of it eagerly welcoming their new overlords (why don’t they just join Threads?) and the other half resisting. The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

This isn’t an existential problem. Just block threads.net.

Sean Tilley
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It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified

As someone who has repeatedly seen cities become gentrified (first Peoria, Illinois, then San Francisco, then Phoenix), I get what you’re trying to say, but also don’t think it’s an appropriate metaphor.

The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

Frankly, I think this is a bit melodramatic. The Anti-Threads part of the Fediverse will stay in their isolated bubble with little to no change, while the rest of the network continues to grow or change. It’s not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult. It’s not like the servers have to move to a different neighborhood. Gentrification is predicated on the finiteness of physical space and affordable places to live.

and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

This is probably news to you, but there’s not even a coherent, all-encompassing definition for what the Fediverse even is. The idea that there’s a “real Fediverse” vs “Fake Fediverse” glosses over all kinds of history and nuance. The best anyone’s gotten to defining it is by specifying protocols and interoperability, but even that doesn’t quite cover it.

The Fediverse isn’t just the parts you like, minus the parts you don’t like.

poVoq
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It’s not like operational costs are skyrocketing, or that hosting will become any more scarce or more difficult.

That remains to be seen. There are multiple ways a single huge instance could drive up costs for everyone else, especially when there isn’t organic growth that allows developers to find creative workarounds to firehose problems.

Lemmy has been seeing federation-desync issues over the last couple of weeks due to a bug in kbin being amplified by Lemmy.world. I imaging a similar issue but with a fully federated Threads would simply ddos most fediverse instances out of existence.

Very good point

SUPAVILLAIN
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I get what you’re trying to say, but also don’t think it’s an appropriate metaphor.

You’re also screamingly White; do you really think you have any latitude, any ground to opine on what is and isn’t gentrification when the odds err closer to 1 that you’ve uncritically participated in this process before?

Y’know, if I had a watch on, I’d be looking at my wrist really condescendingly right about now.

Sean Tilley
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You’re also screamingly White

Just because I have privilege doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced harsh realities that are relevant to this context. The idea that a person’s race automatically qualifies or disqualifies them to speak on a subject without context or nuance is just silly.

You’re out here mad because a dude expressed that it’s stupid to compare server hosting for commodity open source communication software to societal decay caused by landlords, real estate developers, and people with four times the local income all rushing into a place and pricing out the people who already lived there. Y’know, something that actually has a real and tangible material effect.

SUPAVILLAIN
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Who said ‘mad’? I asked you a question; "do you really think you have any latitude". Can’t say your response surprises me either. I think your privilege absolutely disqualifies you from speaking without immense disclaimer-- which you didn’t provide-- because you people can never be trusted to even properly parse the difference between prejudice and racism in definition, theory, or practice; so why should I trust you to properly define what is and isn’t ‘gentrification’? Especially considering the list of cities you give only gives me even more reason to believe you’ve participated in meatspace gentrification just as eagerly as you preach it over here? Tuhhhhhh.

Fact of the matter is, you and your little redditor weasel friends have done an admirable job at scuzzing the place up in State Department rot and water-bearing for all manner of genociders, war criminals, and merchants of death-- Meta included among at least two of three in that count. Their presence alone on the fediverse spreads that same Five-Eyed rot. That you either can’t perceive, or won’t perceive that, leads me to believe that yes. ‘Gentrification’ is exactly what they’re doing. What you’re doing. Just virtual this time; and if you believe corporate takeover of the digital commons doesn’t count, you’d just be proving my point even more about your lack of standing or right to speak on the subject. They will embrace, extend, and then extinguish the fediverse as we know it, and expect you to pay for what comes after. Enjoy your dystopia, settler. You’re no longer invited to discuss with me; not 'til you’ve done any kind of meaningful self-crit and preferentially some objective learning about the sociological place from which you speak.

Sean Tilley
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Nice goalpost shifting, but miss me with your inane rambling, projection, and misplaced sense of entitlement. Just block me and move on.

If I can follow some mainstream entertainment accounts from Mastodon, I’m fine with that. I dislike having to log onto Twitter or Threads just to find out what some motorsports teams are up to.

They slowly start it. When Google killed XMPP they also didn’t do it within a week.

If Google killed XMPP, how come some enterprise communication products (off the top of my head I can name two that are successful at least in Europe) use it?

poVoq
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There is XMPP the protocol which is indeed still widely used by commercial entities, and there is XMPP the open federated network, also called Jabber, which is still alive but Google did kneecap it pretty hard back then.

XMPP as used in the enterprise communication product my employer uses (AFAIK based on the common open source implementation) sucks as much on mobile as Xabber which I used back in the day. I get notifications 30 minutes late if at all. That thing killed itself by not adapting to smartphones.

poVoq
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That’s a bad implementation then. Modern open-source XMPP works great on mobile, no problems with notifications at all on Android. iOS is more of a mixed bag, but that is solely Apple’s fault and applies to all messengers other than iMessage.

That’s a bad implementation then. Modern open-source XMPP works great on mobile

The issue was the state of mobile clients when XMPP died in the mainstream and state of the art was crap like Xabber. Conversations was better but too little, too late.

iOS is more of a mixed bag, but that is solely Apple’s fault and applies to all messengers other than iMessage.

Telegram works flawlessly pretty much everywhere, including iOS which my mom uses.

poVoq
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Well, Monal on iOS doesn’t work worse than Telegram on iOS, so then apparently it’s flawless as well. I am not an iOS user, but I heard complaints about Telegram on iOS as well regarding notifications.

Well, Monal on iOS doesn’t work worse than Telegram on iOS, so then apparently it’s flawless as well.

Again: The current state is irrelevant when discussing the time frame when Google allegedly killed it. The state of Jabber and its clients was just abhorrently bad back in the day. That was the reason the world moved to WhatsApp. Google Talk has always been a niche product. That’s why it’s dead.

poVoq
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It’s not dead, and works fine. I am not disagreeing that it had a serious set-back but that’s water down the river.

Also WhatsApp is using a slightly modified version of XMPP, so your argument is a bit funny :)

It’s not dead, and works fine.

Also WhatsApp is using a slightly modified version of XMPP

Obviously modified enough to work better with mobile when it launched than Jabber’s state of the art back then.

Again: Google did not kill Jabber. Jabber achieved its downfall on its own by being bettered by proprietary services that just worked better on mobile devices BACK THEN.

poVoq
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Google Talk was never Jabber. The Google Jabber integration was way before that in Gmail. Google Talk was what came after Google decided to abandon Jabber.

And yes Google very much held Jabber back by having the largest user-base in their Gmail integration and refusing to even implement SSL for that let alone supporting any other innovations like better mobile support. If Google had actually supported Jabber instead of sabotaging it, we would not have this discussion.

Google Talk was never Jabber. The Google Jabber integration was way before that in Gmail. Google Talk was what came after Google decided to abandon Jabber.

Wikipedia says otherwise.

If Google had actually supported Jabber instead of sabotaging it, we would not have this discussion.

Google kills messaging services all the time and launches new, incompatible ones. Google did not sabotage Jabber, they sabotage their own chat services all the time.

poVoq
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Wikipedia is not a good source on this. By the time Google’s XMPP based messaging product was renamed “Google Talk” it had long ceased to be compatible with the wider Jabber federation.

While I agree that Google does also sabotage their own messengers, it was deeply involved in XMPP specs development and other stuff around the ecosystem in the beginning, and then just quietly began to blockage urgently needed changes as they were unwilling to implement them in their system.

But I guess this discussion has reached the end of being useful as you clearly have a lack of understanding what actually happened back then.

frozen
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I mean. I can’t because I defederated from Threads. But neat, I guess.

You could create another account on someone else’s instance to do it you really wanted to

yeah but why would i want to

@Mongostein@lemmy.ca
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To… umm… read Biden’s posts?

I don’t want to either, I’m just saying you could.

lol at the downvotes. I guess suggesting two accounts to access different Lemmy instances - something many people already do - is offensive to some. 🤷🏻‍♂️

roguetrick
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I’m surprised the white house doesn’t just host a mastodon server. I’m sure they consider using unvetted software to communicate to be a security risk, but it’s no less a risk to put your communication channels in the hands of a third party.

mozz
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Biden: Tell me again what a femcel is

Staff: Please just let’s go back to Tiktok

Biden: What’s a fursona

Sean Tilley
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I’d actually love to see something like this happen, as it seems to be something European governments and officials are embracing. To have something similar for the United States would be incredible.

I think at the moment, there’s a real need for advocates, consultants, and vendors that can actually cater to government entities here. I would imagine there’s probably some crazy data requirements needed for US Government Officials.

poVoq
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I’d actually love to see something like this happen, as it seems to be something European governments and officials are embracing.

I had the chance to ask the responsible person of the EU commission about this at the last CCC congress and sadly he was much less optimistic. The answer basically boilded down to: as long as someone else funds and maintains it they are willing to put an intern or similar at work to post updates, but currently all these efforts are time limited and when funding for the 3rd party to operate them runs out, these efforts are likely to die off quickly. The actual buy in and willingness to operate their own social media infrastructure seems to be very low.

Even better, that should be their primary social network site. It’s inherently restricted to valid government accounts and under their control so all the right data protection and preservation procedures can be followed. Then Threads users can follow potus@socia.whitehouse.gov or whatever.

Match!!
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I wish the US was even trying to be as good as Europe

Truth Social is a Mastodon server. Does this count during the upcoming Trump presidency?

The Fediverse has become the fedpostingiverse

maegul (he/they)
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On one hand I hate all the threads hype that is happening (and am for threads blocking).

On the other hand I don’t think I’ve seen a bigger example of why threads federating is maybe a big deal. POTUS posts on one’s mastodon server, with two-way reply federation coming (?), which can be on a small or individual server, does not ever happen without Threads doing this.

Like, if you’re an author of the protocol like Evan, hoping for your system to make it, POTUS posting over it is certainly a milestone and I’d imagine it’s not at all negligible for the likes of Evan.

Thing is, it was just a button click on Threads because Zuck decided to provide it, which is still shit.

yeah its a big deal because of the spillover effort on how much easier this makes conversations with other gov officials about setting up a fedi server. I’m somewhat involved in this process at this point, and now being able to say that ‘biden is on the fediverse’ really impacts lobbying for the fediverse more broadly

Looks like someone’s been squatting on @POTUS@lemmy.world & @Potus@lemmy.ml since last year.

Genuine LOL.

@pedroapero@lemmy.ml
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2.7M followers displayed on Threads; 2.8M on Mastodon.

When you visit a Lemmy community, only its home server displays the actual subscriber number. If you visit the community from a different server, it shows only the number of subscribers from your server. That’s the reason I put one of those subscriber count badges in the side bar, so everyone can see the correct number.

I highly doubt that there are 2.8M members on my instance (not to mention potus subscribers)

Melkath
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Rams through major bribery to kill TikTok and try to force a sell to Facebook.

Immediately sets up a Threads account.

Tik Tak Toe.

Meta just pays enough.

Melkath
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With what?

Facebook has been death rattling for the better part of a decade.

The metaverse failed.

Oh shit… the Oculus.

Cheaper means higher volume means spy-ie-er.

So that’s how they could afford that NEARLY UNANIMOUS bill.

To be fair, I have a vive and it is just as much of a data breach.

LanternEverywhere
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Facebook is the 3rd most visited website. Instagram (which is also owned by them) is the 4th most visited site. Oculus is and has been the best selling vr system by a lot. As much as we would like it not to be true, the reality is that facebook is extremely far from death rattling

https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/

WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messenger. FB Messenger (which is now its own product for whatever reason) is also extremely successful.

Uhh… have they not been paying attention to the bans against Threads? Somebody over there isn’t doing their job.

Sabata11792
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Our existence is a rounding error.

Gamma
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Glad some people understand

This will also force people to love to threads-federated servers, though Biden is a pretty weak reason. Meta would be smart to encourage more adopters people on fediverse care about

That sounds really familiar, is that a quote from somewhere?

Sabata11792
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Probably. I’m sure I stole it from something I seen before.

Haha fair enough!

Sean Tilley
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They probably thought they’d reach a greater number of people. They’re probably right.

Why would I want to follow either account?

SUPAVILLAIN
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Gross. Keep that settler genocidaire on the Meta side of the fence; if I have to see his shit turn up in my feed I’m gonna get about as ugly to him and his homies as he’s been to the Black population of this country ever since the motherfucker became a senator.

Aaaaaannnd… Blocked.

I hope they know DMs aren’t secure on Fediverse.

Chozo
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I don’t think the president is using DMs.

Few places have secure DMs.

Vigilante
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That’d be gold if it happened

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