Meta's move toward the open social web, also known as the Fediverse, is puzzling. Do the owners of Facebook think that open protocols are the future? Just accept the Fediverse, shut it down, send people back to its own platform, and destroy the startups that are building in this space. I wonder? Will that ad empire be brought to the Fediverse, where clients like Mastodon currently don't see ads?
One possible answer comes from a conversation between two Meta employees working on Threads and Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. Mike McCue's company has joined the Fediverse with support for his ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and others.
On McCue's podcast, “Flipboard Dot Social,” he spoke with two leaders building the Threads experience: Rachel Lambert, director of product management, and Peter Cottle, software engineer. McCue spoke with others working on the Fediverse project, including what Meta's involvement means for the space and whether Meta will ultimately abandon Threads and Fediverse, leaving behind a destroyed ecosystem. Raised questions and concerns to share with others.
Lambert pointed out that since Meta has other open source initiatives underway, “lowering the threshold” for federal efforts would come at a “very high cost” for the company. I responded to this. Trusting relationships with other open source communities.
For example, the company releases some of its large-scale language model (LLM) work as open source products like Llama.
Additionally, Threads users can now view their posts in the wider Fediverse on Mastodon and other apps.
But more importantly, what McCue (and all of us) wanted to know. Why is Meta involved with the Fediverse in the first place?
According to Q1 2024 revenue, Meta currently has 3.24 billion people using its social apps every day. Do we really need a few more million?
Lambert indirectly answered this question by describing an example of using Threads as a place to have public conversations in real time. She suggested that connecting to the Fediverse would help users find a wider audience than she could reach with her Threads alone.
However, that is true up to a point. fediverse is active and growing, but Threads is already the dominant app in this space. Threads currently has 150 million monthly active users, while the overall Fediverse user count is just over 10 million. Mastodon, the top federation app, dropped below his 1 million monthly active users after Threads launched.
So if Threads joining the Fediverse isn't about significantly expanding the reach of creators, what is the purpose of Meta?
Meta employee statements hint at the broader reasons behind Meta's move to the Fediverse.
Bringing the creator economy to the open social web
Image credit: Meta
Lambert suggests that joining the Fediverse gives Threads creators the opportunity to “own their audience in a way that no other app today can.”
But this isn't just about account portability, it's also about the potential for creators and their revenue streams to leave the walled gardens of meta. If creators want to leave Meta and move on to other social apps that have a more direct relationship with their fans, there are still few big options outside of TikTok and YouTube.
Even if these creators join the Fediverse, perhaps to escape the meta's grip on their livelihoods, users of the thread will continue to benefit from their content. (Cue “Hotel California”).
Later in the podcast, Cottle details how this also plays out at the protocol level when creators offer their followers the ability to pay for access to their content.
“Eventually you can imagine extending the protocol, like, 'We want to support micropayments,' or… 'Hey, if you want to support it, feel free to show us ads.'” Self-labeling It's like a way to self-opt in. That's great,” Cottle said casually. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Meta will find a way to get some of these micropayments.
McCue criticized the idea that Fediverse users could become creators by making some of their content available only to subscribers, similar to how Patreon works. For example, Evan Prodromou, a fediverse proponent and co-editor of ActivityPub, has created his Mastodon account (@evanplus@prodromou.pub), which is a paid account that users can subscribe to for $5 per month for access. . If he gets into paid content, he's sure others will follow suit. Cottle agreed that this model could work in the Fediverse.
He further suggested that there are ways the Fediverse can monetize other than donations, which are often the driving force behind various initiatives today like Mastodon. Cottle said someone might create a Fediverse experience where consumers pay a fee, similar to how some Fediverse client apps pay today.
“Servers aren't free to run. And ultimately someone… has to find a way to keep the cost of doing business,” he noted. Could Meta be considering a paid federation experience like the one Medium has launched?
Moderation services at protocol level
The podcast brought up another possible answer as to what Meta is working on in this space, and hinted that it could bring its moderation expertise to the ActivityPub protocol.
“A lot of the avenues we provide for people to feel safe and to feel able to personalize their experience are very blunt today, which means you can block users… across the board. You can also block at the server level, which is a huge action, but I feel like we're missing other tools that are a little more like a proportional response,” Lambert explained.
Currently, fediverse users cannot filter their followers or filter replies to offensive content or behavior. “It would be great if it could be developed as a standard at the protocol level,” she added.
Still, Lambert said that no matter what work Meta does, he doesn't expect everyone in the federation to adopt its own toolkit.
Image credit: Auto
“We are building our technology around a set of policies, and our policies are informed by a variety of inputs from civil rights organizations, policy stakeholders, and generally our values. I don't ever want to think that that is now the standard for moderation in the commonwealth, but it is our responsibility to make these tools more accessible so that people have that choice. It seems like a very attractive path from that point of view.”
Meta's plans are also very similar to Bluesky's idea of stackable moderation services, with third parties providing moderation on top of Bluesky, either as independent projects from individuals or communities, or as paid subscription products. service can be provided.
Perhaps Meta also sees a future in which its existing moderation capabilities become subscription revenue products across a broader, open social web.
Finally, Lambert discussed the Fediverse user experience, which makes it easier to track conversations around posts across multiple servers.
“I think that combined with tools that allow them to personalize that experience will help people feel safer and more in control,” she said.