Meta's Threads enables Fediverse replies and likes

I think it's both more than that and less than that. Unless I missed some news, Meta's newfound love for product openness has only really manifested in Llama and Threads—I haven't seen any evidence of shifts in their core products.

I think what's happened is that in both cases Meta knows that they don't really stand a chance of actually unseating the big players in that segment on their own, but that Meta can make a dent in their profit margins if they can dilute the value of owning that segment. Llama is squarely targeted at preventing anyone from owning AI. I think Threads is doing the same thing with microblogging. If Meta can't own a segment they're going to make darn sure that no one else can own it and use their profits from it to push Meta out of their core.

If it also makes the company look more palatable to regulators, that's a nice side effect, but I'm not sure it would work as the primary goal.

As to the "why" I think it's fairly obvious. If they integrate with everything, they'll eventually become the defacto platform and/or steer users and engagement to their other platforms with less friction.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41327567

Mark Z was clear on Dwarkesh's podcast that when he has things open he does so because he thinks it will benefit Meta and he explicitly says it's not altruistic and that if it stops being useful he'll stop making things open.

But of course there are chinks in TWitter's armor, specifically the whole blue check debacle and that Twitter itself is rapidly becoming 4chan (or even 8chan) and advertisers are understandably fleeing.

Still, the chance of success isn't great. Launching it under the iG brand was probably a good idea, better than under Facebook at least.

Still, when it comes to open source and integration with third-parties I keep thinking of the quote "open source is for losers" (that might come from this [1]), meaning all but the dominant player embrace interoperability and open source in a desperate attempt to topple the dominant player.

I have no idea what usage looks like but I'm glad they haven't given up. I know Google would've canceled it by now (and probably replaced it with something that looks kinda similar, has a different name/branding but no compatibility with the old thing, if chat apps are anything to go by).

I still say federation is something tech people care about but offers nothing of tangible value to end users. There hasn't been a successful federated technology since email. For a reason.

[1]: https://siliconangle.com/2014/05/29/only-loser-vendors-are-t...

Is threads hoping to become "the" instance in the fediverse? Then they can impose their will across the rest of the fediverse.

threads: "oh, you have a single user instance and want to federate with us? Pay us $500 per user/year, and use our preferred server which allows us to sell ad space on your server"

I'm holding off on making the cynical conclusion about Threads' motivations.

I know it’s still early and features are being built out, but my guess is the number is close to 0.