There’s a common false dichotomy about #Threads: cut them off, or leave it to user choice.
I can’t speak to other software, but Mastodon offers a third option: limiting Threads. This can be done for all users of a server.
- You can follow Threads accounts after clicking through a warning.
- People who don’t follow those same people won’t see their posts.
- You have to manually approve followers _from_ Threads.
Basically, it puts Threads in quarantine, without cutting off all connections.
I like that option for our server, social.coop, and it’s the one we voted to implement earlier this year.
We know that Threads already hosts bad actors (e.g., LibsOfTikTok). We know some reasonable folks have set up shop there and will continue to flee there from X.
This option makes it clear that Threads is not a safe space, while allowing limited connections.
Every instance will implement the option that makes sense to them, of course.
I don’t get it, I know the posts of these apps look similar, but these are two very different apps. One has verified users with phone numbers, with names and surnames, posting about their lives and selling products.
Well, actually mastodon would have more of those of it were bigger. But the content is different.
If mastodon users would just see the threads content, but not be able to interact normally, then I think it’s obvious this is bad for mastodon and instances should defederate. But Facebook doesn’t care about a few mastodon users either way. Maybe they just want an option to be a part of it when twitter goes down, try and get a piece of it.