Adam Mosseri says Meta’s Threads app won’t have ActivityPub support at launch

Meta is set to launch its text-based Twitter rival Threads tomorrow. However, Meta briefly made the platform live on the web before pulling the links. During that time, users could already read posts from existing users on the web without an account (something that is currently not possible on Twitter anymore).

Notably, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a post that there will be no ActivityPub support at launch. ActivityPub is a protocol that is used to post on decentralized networks like Mastodon. But the platform plans to allow interactions with other fediverse servers in the future.

When you tap on the threads.net button next to someone’s profile, Threads shows a popup saying users will soon be able to interact with people on other servers on the fediverse.

“Soon, you’ll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, such as Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, such as @mosseri@threads.net.”

Mosseri also noted that the team building Threads wasn’t able to complete the work to support fediverse at launch.

“We’re committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but it’s coming,” he said.

“If you’re wondering why this matters, here’s a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that.”

Folks like Mark Zuckerberg, Mosseri, YouTuber iJustine and Formula 1 driver Lando Norris, along with brands like Netflix, have been posting on the platform already. These accounts already have a few thousand followers, so presumably, there are that many users on the Threads app already.

At the moment, you can only view posts and profiles as well as share links to those posts. One neat feature on the site is that clicking on the Threads icon on the top will change the theme from light to dark or vice versa.

On Tuesday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted that users will be able to decide who can reply to posts — everyone, profiles they follow or accounts cited in the post.

While Threads will launch on Thursday, Ireland’s data regulator has said that the app won’t launch in the EU for now due to privacy concerns surrounding it. Users on other platforms have already posted about the amount of data collected by the Threads app based on the data labels on the App Store.