Instagram Threads won’t share a timeline for account portability

Will Instagram thread really integrated with fediverseAlso known as the Open Social Web, it allows users to contact people on other services like Mastodon and move their accounts elsewhere if they decide Meta’s policies are no longer to their liking? Today that answer remains unclear. Meta has yet to confirm whether account portability features will be added to its roadmap and federation plans for the new social network.

Reached for comment on the status of the thread’s account portability efforts, a Meta spokesperson said those plans were “top of mind” but declined to share details about the roadmap going forward.

Meta’s decision to not currently prioritize account portability in the near term comes at a critical time for the tech giant. The company announced this recently The end of its fact-checking program In favor of a crowdsourced community notes feature, similar to X, alongside looser content control rules. this too Disabling a system that penalizes misinformation According to a report by Platformer, that content ranks down across its platforms. Those changes could prompt users to reevaluate their relationship with Meta and possibly consider moving their accounts to other services — something Threads said it plans to eventually allow.

At the same time, Gen Z users are so fed up with Meta’s monopoly on social media that instead of returning to Instagram in preparation for the US ban on TikTok, they Another Chinese social network called Rednote (Jiohongshu) went viral as of this week, something 700,000 TikTok users At the same time joined RedNote while making jokes on TikTok, which sees them Goodbye to those “Chinese spies“

The threads were meant to indicate a new direction for Meta, in the sense that it would no longer try to compete with the open social web, but instead join it. To date, there has been much discussion about how Mater moved to Fediverse, the open social web powered by the ActivityPub protocol, albeit built in good faith. Critics expressed concern That meta was just coming to dominate the open web and quickly established itself as the largest federated client, giving it control over the future direction of Fediverse.

Nevertheless, Meta Threads continues to have many integrations with Fediverse, including things like being able to Mastodon’s cross-post And See replies from Mastodon users in the thread. It has also done a lot of heavy lifting on the user education side by including guides and explainers about Fediverse within the Thread app and on the web.

However, one of the key components of being a federated app is adoption Account portability. This means that if you don’t like the way your federated server is working, you can move your account elsewhere without losing your followers, following, bookmarks, lists and more.

A December 2023 meeting Among Meta representatives and Fediverse community members, Meta shared that part of what prompted its move to Fediverse in the first place was users’ concerns over the idea that Meta was effectively “owned” by one’s followers. (Although the meeting was not on the record, community members in attendance were able to share what was discussed, as long as they did not directly quote or attribute specific individuals’ statements from Meta.)

A Summary During the meeting, attendee Tom Coates noted that Meta said it wanted to integrate with Fediverse to help address users’ concerns about their social graph.

“They were looking for the ability to know they could go somewhere else if they needed to,” Coates wrote, though added that it “didn’t feel like the whole story.”

In light of Meta’s sweeping policy changes regarding fact-checking and moderation, it seems like a good time to check its Fediverse agenda, given that there are no signs that the company has started working on the feature.

When asked for a roadmap update on account portability, a Meta spokesperson could not confirm that the topic was even on the Threads roadmap, let alone when it would be addressed.

Instead, they shared that account portability is “top of mind as we continue our FedEx integration” and “there are no additional details on the roadmap or timing at this time.”

While Threads may still very well intend to eventually add an account portability feature, that’s not a priority because, for now at least, the company aims to keep its users on Threads. The social network grew into what would be the largest federated app (if it were fully federated), 300 million monthly active usersup from 275 million in November. It also has 100 million daily active users.

This story was updated after publication with the correct number of TikTok users joining RedNote, which is 700,000, not 700,000. million.