More than a few Meta employees showed up at FediForum earlier this week, doubling down on their commitment to open protocols and “being a good neighbor on the Fediverse”. While there were some demos and fruitful conversations, one public concern flew under the radar.
An eagle-eyed Threads user noticed that their status giving Pixelfed a positive mention was seemingly hidden from the tree of a public conversation. From there, coverage picked up across the network, and even made it back to Daniel Supernault, Pixelfed’s creator.
“Meta is free to do whatever they want on their platforms,” the developer mentioned, “and I hope this is a bug.”
For now, no one’s quite sure. Various people have tried to recreate the same situation with their Threads accounts, and their comments are still publicly available. We have yet to see a statement from the Threads team on the situation.
Bug or not, a vocal part of the network is apprehensive about Meta’s true intentions with the platform, ranging from pessimism on how much effort Threads is really putting in to the Fediverse, to accusations of hostile behavior. Dropping the ball like this can hurt user confidence, especially when building community goodwill is so crucial.
Prior History
Pixelfed has something of an established history with being at odds with Meta. Some of that points to Pixelfed’s form factor, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Instagram.
In the past, the project was warned by a Meta employee about using the same filter names and styles for images, citing a potential violation of Meta’s intellectual property. Pixelfed complied, and changed their image filters and styles in hopes of sidestepping the issue. It never came up again.
Additionally, there have been situations in the past where both Twitter and Facebook have censored posts linking to open source Fediverse alternatives. Even if Threads is an effort to right wrongs of the past, these situations don’t reflect well on Threads or its parent company.
When is a bug just a bug?
For all we know right now, this is very likely an unfortunate bug. However, it’s important for the Threads team to nip this in the bud, if they really want to establish good vibes about their efforts.
FediPact is an Organized Effort to Block Meta’s ActivityPub Platform
https://wedistribute.org/2023/06/fedipact-blocking-meta/embed/#?secret=7cLoHjF70r#?secret=2YsFyid9V9
On the other hand, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a segment of the network that won’t be satisfied with an explanation, no matter how much evidence is presented. Some people will block Meta no matter what, and that’s their choice.
Regardless, we’ll keep you posted if we learn anything more.
https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/is-threads-hiding-pixelfed/
#Meta
Twitter is now blocking links to pixelfed!"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win"
Staging by dansup · Pull Request #4037 · pixelfed/pixelfed
Photo Sharing. For Everyone. Contribute to pixelfed/pixelfed development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Hypolite Petovan likes this.
Tobias reshared this.