Threads deepens its ties to the open social web, aka the 'fediverse'

Threads is deepening its ties to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndicated to the fediverse.

The latter had previously been announced via an in-app message informing users that API posts would be shared to the fediverse starting on August 28.

Following Meta’s launch of the Threads API in June, companies like Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Sprout Social, Grabyo and others have integrated access to Threads into their own platforms and services, making Threads more useful to brands, businesses and other social media marketers. It will also be important to expand the reach of high-profile accounts run by social media teams, like the @potus account, for instance.

By comparison, Elon Musk’s X over the past year has limited access to its API by shutting down its free tier and raising prices, in an effort to increase revenue for the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The other major change rolling out to Threads today has to do with how fediverse replies are displayed.

Since June, users have been able to see fediverse replies on their posts if they enabled fediverse sharing in the app’s settings. Once enabled, the sharing option allows users to syndicate their posts across the wider social web and then see how people on other services have responded. Now users will be able to see the fediverse replies on other people’s posts, too. This immediately brings more content into Threads, even without a sizable increase in Threads users.

A Meta engineer suggested testing the feature by viewing the replies of larger accounts, like YouTuber Marques Brownlee (@mkbhd), for example.

Here, you’ll notice a new section that shows how many “fediverse replies” are available above the replies posted to Threads itself.

It’s worth noting that you have to tap or click on the “fediverse replies” section to actually view what’s being said on other servers and by who. Currently, Threads users can like the replies from other servers, but they can’t yet reply to them, as the feature is still in beta and under development.

While it makes sense in the near term to separate the fediverse replies into their own section as users learn what it means to participate in the wider social web, requiring the extra click to view them also somewhat buries them in the Threads user interface. That makes them seem of less importance than the native Threads replies. Of course, Threads’ user interface could still change as the product evolves.

Threads is the largest app to adopt ActivityPub, the protocol powering the fediverse, worrying some that Meta will take over the decentralized, open source social network made up of interconnected servers. Though Threads isn’t yet full integrated, already some Mastodon server operators have preemptively blocked Threads, so their users can’t interact with the Meta-run social network and vice versa.