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You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse (wedistribute.org)
submitted 7 months ago by deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.

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[-] leadore@kbin.social 67 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[-] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 17 points 7 months ago

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@kbin.social 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 5 points 7 months ago

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

[-] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago

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@slrpnk.net 7 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] Blaze@dormi.zone 1 points 7 months ago

Very good point

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[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago

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

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[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 57 points 7 months ago

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

[-] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago

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

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 11 points 7 months ago

yeah but why would i want to

[-] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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@kbin.social 43 points 7 months ago

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@mbin.grits.dev 26 points 7 months ago

Biden: Tell me again what a femcel is

Staff: Please just let's go back to Tiktok

Biden: What's a fursona

[-] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 12 points 7 months ago

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@slrpnk.net 5 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 7 points 7 months ago

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@pawb.social 6 points 7 months ago

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

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

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

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[-] fediverse_report@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago

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

[-] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

2.7M followers displayed on Threads; 2.8M on Mastodon.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

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

[-] davel@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago

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

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago

Genuine LOL.

[-] Melkath@kbin.social 8 points 7 months ago

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

Immediately sets up a Threads account.

Tik Tak Toe.

[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

Meta just pays enough.

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[-] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 7 points 7 months ago

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

[-] Sabata11792@kbin.social 30 points 7 months ago

Our existence is a rounding error.

[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 4 points 7 months ago

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

[-] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 2 points 7 months ago

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

[-] Sabata11792@kbin.social 3 points 7 months ago

Probably. I'm sure I stole it from something I seen before.

[-] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 2 points 7 months ago

Haha fair enough!

[-] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 23 points 7 months ago

They probably thought they'd reach a greater number of people. They're probably right.

[-] retronautickz@beehaw.org 3 points 7 months ago

Why would I want to follow either account?

[-] frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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