After a year of slow, sometimes confusing steps toward fediverse support, Threads is now making it easier for users to actually see and discover content from other platforms. Here’s how it works, and how to enable it.
Starting today, if you’ve enabled fediverse sharing in Threads, you’ll get access to a new reverse-chronological feed showing posts from federated accounts you follow on Mastodon, WordPress, Flipboard, or other ActivityPub-based services.
What’s more, Threads is also rolling out the ability to search for fediverse users by handle, so it will be much easier to find and follow people posting from outside the app.
As The Verge broke it down:
When you set up fediverse sharing, Threads automatically connects to whatever accounts you’ve followed, but you can also now search for users on Mastodon and elsewhere from the Threads search bar. If you follow them, you’ll start to see their posts in Threads too.
Still a separate feed for fediverse posts, but that’s a start
Until now, following a Mastodon user from Threads has been somewhat fiddly at best. As Mark Zuckerberg explained it back in December, you were only able to “follow people from other fediverse servers who liked, followed or replied to federated profiles on Threads.”
With today’s update, Threads introduces a dedicated fediverse feed that shows posts from federated accounts you follow. The feed appears as a new section at the top of your Following tab, and shows posts in reverse chronological order, just like in the regular Following feed.
Although a bit cumbersome, the new Fediverse feed being completely separate from the main Following or For You feeds is deliberate. As engineer Peter Cottle explained to The Verge’s David Pierce, keeping fediverse content in its own space helps avoid confusion around moderation, identity, and user expectations.
Today’s update also makes it possible to find and follow federated users directly by handle (like @[email protected]). Threads will show a fediverse badge next to profiles that aren’t native to Threads, making it easier to know who’s posting from outside.
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