President Biden is now on the fediverse
The “fediverse,” the decentralized, federated social media world (powered by the ActivityPub protocol) has seen some recent changes. Threads, Meta’s attempt at a Twitter-like text-based social network, has now opened its app (as a beta) to the fediverse as an optional setting. Once activated (instructions here), Threads users’ accounts will be visible on ActivityPub-based social networks such as Mastodon. That said, Threads federating has generated much controversy on Mastodon, to the point some Mastodon instances have blocked federating with (i.e. access from) Threads.
Among the Threads users now making use of ActivityPub? The President of the United States. President Biden’s Threads account is now accessible via ActivityPub. Here’s how it looks from my Mastodon account:
While Vice President Harris’ Threads account isn’t federated, the official Threads White House is federated (@whitehouse@threads.net).
It’d be nice to see more governments and media outlets use federated social media (versus the site-formerly-known-as-Twitter) to post news updates, press releases, emergency information, etc. While Threads is technically federated, it’s currently not on by default. Also, Threads is owned by Meta, so might run into the same flaws as Twitter or Facebook.
Truth Social: (evil) proof Mastodon can be user-friendly?
As for Biden’s 2024 election opponent, Donald Trump, he’s stuck to using Truth Social (which he has a financial stake in, surprise surprise). For the unfamiliar, Truth Social is a Twitter-like social network aimed at conservatives, based on a forked, customized version of Mastodon. Despite its roots, it’s not federated with ActivityPub; never mind most Mastodon instances would likely block Truth Social, anyway (similar to the fate of fellow right-wing Mastodon-forked social network Gab).
It feels odd to note that Truth Social’s an example of Mastodon being user-friendly, versus Mastodon’s reputation as confusing to new (or non-techie) users. Of course, a big reason is Truth Social only has its sole server to sign up for, like Twitter, removing the often-cited “picking a server is confusing” obstacle. The same goes (for now) for Bluesky. Truth Social also hides anything remotely techie from end users. In short, it’s easy enough for the likes of Donald Trump (or his staff) to use. Too bad it’s for a negative purpose, and it’s bad even at that. Truth Social’s user base is less than a million users, a fraction of what Mastodon or Bluesky have; it also ran into criticism for improperly using Mastodon’s code.