Here’s everything we know about it so far:
- It will use ActivityPub.
- It will be a side app of Instagram.
- It will most likely be called Threads.
- Your Instagram verification status will transfer over.
- There will be easy discovery tools in place: Your Instagram followers will be able to follow you on Threads as well (they won’t transfer over automatically).
What do you think?
I genuinely believe this could be successful.
Mastodon STILL has UX issues, and the rest of ActivityHub and the Fediverse are impenetrable to the average person. That will change over time, but in the meantime, I can’t even get people to use Signal for god’s sake, let alone explain which Lemmy instance is best for them.
I still have an Instagram because my friends do. Without Instagram DMs and iMessage, I lose real life connections. If they fold in a Twitter-esque client to Instagram, that I can interact with from Mastodon if I want? That sounds like a really strong value proposition to me, and is the only way your non-techy friends are joining this parade any time soon.
But also, we’ve got to make sure these massive companies don’t snuff out what Lemmy and Mastodon are building. There’s a group of suits somewhere right now thinking of how to monetise this platform, and we need to be prepared for that.
I feel your pain 1000%
I tried for the longest time to get my wife, other friends, family, etc. to use Signal to no avail. Trying to explain Lemmy or Mastadon to them is like trying to explain the concept of fire to cavemen. (Not that they’re dumb or even tech illiterate necessarily, I just don’t think most folks care enough to bother with it sadly right now).
I at least succeeded with my partner, so the most private conversations I have are safe in Signal. But unfortunately Meta knows just about every party, dinner, or event I’ve been too for the last ~8 years from having planned it in either Messenger or Instagram. It’s shame we have to choose connection over privacy, and I hope someday someone hits on the magical combination of privacy, UX, and blind luck and makes a service we can use without feeling like a product.
After reading this very thread, one thing is clear: People simply don’t trust Meta, for good reason.
But I’m still, perhaps naively, hopeful that this one could be the platform to pivot the decentralised social web approach to the masses.
Also, a funny scenario: What if you wait it out until enough people follow you on Threads, then take all your followers and transfer over to a Mastodon instance? I may do that, actually.
I’m right there hoping with you and I think this very well could be a big turning point as they’ll be the first major player, to my knowledge, to incorporate anything Fediverse into their ecosystem.
My other big hope is that the process of signing up for sites like Lemmy, Mastadon, and other Fediverse apps is improved so that more people can navigate it easily. As you said, right now the UX is pretty bad and can be frustrating even for veteran users of the internet. My biggest frustration, like many, when signing up for Mastadon was trying to choose a server and the way the Servers page is structured made it ten times more difficult I felt like because it’s just a giant list of servers that are sorted by category.
I think with a really great UX and simplified UI for the sign-up process that would go a long way to not turning people away. I imagine a literal walk through of the whole process, step by step, with lots of hand holding and tool-tips pointing to things in case someone gets confused.
I hear this a lot, but how do these people manage to find a doctor, or a car repair shop, or a garbage company,etc? It’s exactly as confusing or hard, which is to say not at all.
There’s no great easy hand holding for choosing a repair shop or doctor - you either look it up or go to the first one you find or a random one. Same works with the fediverse.
I agree with you fully that it’s not hard or difficult necessarily–I think it can just be frustrating for some users, even more web/tech-literate folks.
I just think improving the UX/UI in general and providing more explanation/resources especially to newer users would go a long way with encouraging elieving some of the frustrations. Easier said than done obviously!
There’s definitely a trust issue. ActivityHub doesn’t fundamentally change that unfortunately - Meta would still see everything I post or say, and can still build a profile on me if my posts are visible in their app. You bring up an interesting thought though - my understanding is that ActivityHub would make migration to other platforms easier… even migrations off first party apps, if a Digg/Reddit/Twitter-style event occurred? Might help prevent some of the tomfoolery we’re seeing now.
Or I’m also naive, I guess we’ll find out.
As far as I understand that’s correct. I’ve got a solid junior level understand of programming LOL but ActivityPub acts as an interface basically where instead of the content being walled off to Instagram specifically this new Threads app should be accessible by the outside world (Mastadon, Lemmy, whatever else) through ActivityPub. Those apps would get the content through requests to the interface. So you could theoretically migrate your content just like you can on other Fediverse apps.
I feel the same pains with Signal, I was very lucky in the sense that basically everyone I needed to communicate with would join, however a few members, mostly my brother which is known to be very much a stick in the mud wouldn’t join. While I love him to death, he can be very much a pain to bargain with. Maybe someday…
Wouldn’t it make it so much worse? If getting people to sign up for a Lemmy instance is a hard sell, it would be even harder telling them that they’ve now got to choose an instance that doesn’t federate with Meta stuff. (unless you’re fine with letting Meta in, which I’m not).
Yes, to all of this.
UX people probably call this “friction” or something. I think the fediverse currently has too much “friction” for the average person.
Whereas with Threads it’ll be as simple as tapping the “Continue using Facebook” button. 🤔
If people are ok with Facebook, why would they be not ok with Twitter?
Oh, I’m sure they are. I just mean, if The Masses are going to try anything, it’s going to be the easier of the two options (with loads of marketing behind it). :)
Yep, I’m in a similar boat with real life connections as well as content creators I like. I’d love to drop Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, but so much of the people and content I enjoy are only in those places. I’d love to be a shepherd, but that’s easier said than done with friends and family, let alone a content creator you’d be invisible to through no fault of your own.
I’d still like to minimize my presence in such places, and I’m actively working toward that. But I think it’s going to be a long time before I’m completely out of there, if ever.
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