We spoke with a product manager at Meta to learn how the company plans to bring interoperability to Threads in the coming months. It faces both technical and cultural challenges.

Meta is treading carefully, doing a phased implementation while continuing conversations with Fediverse leaders. This will give the company more time to iron out some of the integration kinks. “Do we adapt the protocol to be able to support this?” Lambert asks. “Or do we try to do some kind of interesting, unique implementation?” For example, Threads supports audio posts, a feature not currently supported within ActivityPub, so Meta is experimenting with “federating” a text transcription of the original post instead of the audio version.

It was never a good idea federating with Threads

  • @QuazarOmegaAEnglish
    2•4 months ago

    Besides the obvious repulsion for anything Meta, that’s a novel thing to see, I’m kinda curious to see what happens with the user reception of these audio posts

    • nicetriangle
      3•4 months ago

      It sounds annoying as fuck. I hate when my friends send audio messages in messaging apps.

      • @QuazarOmegaAEnglish
        2•4 months ago

        Yep, think the same, too many voice messages are a pain, though adding a transcription sounds like a good deal, which also makes discoverability possible