Meta is taking another major step toward making Threads interoperable with the fediverse. The app now allows users to follow Mastodon accounts and various other apps directly from Threads, Mark Zuckerberg told .
From the of Threads, Meta has committed to bringing in support for ActivityPub, the open source protocol that powers Mastodon and others which form “the fediverse”. Ultimately, the goal is for Threads users to seamlessly interact with other Mastodon users or other sites that use ActivityPub.
With the latest change, previously activated Threads users in the app you’ll now be able to view profiles and follow Mastodon accounts and other services directly in Threads. The update is an important step in making Threads compatible with the wider Activity Pub ecosystem.
That said, there are still some major limitations to Threads’ diverse support. There is currently no way to search for users on other servers, so the only way to find these accounts is to search for multiple accounts that have or otherwise one of your posts.
Users also can’t reply to posts that originate on Mastodon or other ActivityPub services, so interactions remain one-way, at least for now. And a disclaimer built into Meta’s app notes that fediverse sharing is still a beta feature and that some posts from other servers “may not be visible” in Threads. Adam Mosseri, however, that “more interoperability features are on the way,” so hopefully diversity enthusiasts won’t have long to wait to see deeper integrations.
