This week, maybe all of April, I’m scaling back a bit from Mastodon as I give Threads another try. It has slowly been opening to federation lately, which seems good.
Threads has a lot of people and organizations that are not on Mastodon, it has quote posts (still missing from Mastodon), and it has a nicer design. And while an algorithm-based “For You” feed isn’t always ideal, it helps discover new people to follow. Threads also features a reverse-chrono “Following” feed of only those you want to see.
The big downside of Threads is it being owned by Meta (controlled by a billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg), which has a sordid history of privacy contempt, moderation problems, and various controversies.
That said, Threads is thus far not bad. And it seems to be keeping its ActivityPub federation promise.
So I’m giving it another go. If its federation works out, I should be able to follow and interact with people on Mastodon too. On the flip side, I’ve already followed a Threads user from within Mastodon. Nice.
We’ll see how things play out over time. I never wrote off Threads; I just took a break from it a few times because it’s too much mental overhead to invest in multiple social networks. I chose to focus on Mastodon. Now I’m giving Threads attention, checking into Mastodon less for a while. I’ll probably cross-post my blogs to both for now.
If the potential of federation fully yields fruit, then I guess it really won’t matter what social network one chooses. You could pick whatever and still interact with anyone who is anywhere else. What a concept! It might be a little messy, but it might be worth it.
Update: Just realized I hadn’t turned on Threads federation. But now it’s on! So if you’re, say, on Mastodon and want to follow my Threads, here ya go:
@_jasonmcfadden_@threads.net
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