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.
Whether or not they have it in the back of their greasy little minds somewhere that they’d like to kill of every alternative that can’t be bought out instead, this is also facebook desperately trying to stay relevant. If they don’t federate, it’s all or nothing: Unless they become completely dominant in the field of mastodon-like social media services their product will be quickly forgotten. If they do federate, they have some chance to survive if only by being known as the one, alone among the current billion-user contenders, that does actually federate.