Meta starts testing Threads integration with ActivityPub

Mark Zuckerberg said today that Meta has started testing a feature to show Threads posts on Mastodon and other ActivityPub protocol-supported networks.

“Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I’m pretty optimistic about this,” Zuckerberg said in a post.

While this is an important step for Threads to be part of the federated social network, Zuckerberg didn’t provide any detail on how the integration might work just yet.

Hours after the announcement, multiple users reported that they could follow Instagram head Adam Mosseri through various Mastodon clients. However, his posts were not visible. Users on Mastodon could also search for Mosseri’s Threads profile by typing “@mosseri@threads.net,” so hopefully they would be able to look for other Threads profiles in the future.

It’s not clear if the roadmap for Threads’ ActivityPub integration will let you easily cross-post between Mastodon (or other ActivityPub-powered networks) and Threads or move your data around.

When Threads launched in July, Mosseri said the social network wouldn’t have integration with the fediverse at the launch. However, he emphasized that Meta kept on integrating its newest platform with the decentralized social web.

“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 at that time.

In August, Threads launched a way for users to verify their profile on Mastodon. The company added “rel=me” links — a way to establish a relationship between two accounts by pointing links to each other.

Today’s announcement from Zuckerberg is the first real sign of intent from Meta to make Threads part of the decentralized social network system.