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Meta has started testing the integration of Threads, its social networking app, with the Activity Pub protocol, making Threads posts visible on Mastodon and other networks compatible with Activity Pub. Mark Zuckerberg announced this move, emphasizing that it will enhance content visibility and user control.

On 13 December 2023, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta has begun testing a feature that will display Threads posts on Mastodon and other networks that are compatible with the ActivityPub protocol.

“Making Threads interoperable will help content reach a wider audience and give users more control over how they interact. I think this will work out pretty well,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post.

Although this is a crucial step for Threads to join the federated social network, Zuckerberg hasn’t yet given any specifics on how the integration would operate.

Many users discovered that they could follow Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri via different Mastodon clients’ hours after the announcement. His posts weren’t visible, though. By entering “@[email protected],” users on Mastodon could also search for Mosseri’s Threads profile; ideally, this would allow them to search for other Threads profiles in the future.

It’s unclear from the roadmap whether moving your data around or enabling cross-posting between Threads and Mastodon (or other ActivityPub-powered networks) will be simple with the integration of Threads and ActivityPub.

Mosseri stated at the time of Threads’ July debut that the social network would not have fediverse integration. He did stress, though, that Meta continued to integrate the decentralized social web with its newest platform.

“We’re dedicated to integrating support for Mastodon’s underlying protocol, ActivityPub, into this application. Due to several challenges associated with a decentralized network, we were unable to complete it in time for launch, but it will happen soon,” he stated at the time.

Threads introduced a feature that allows users to validate their Mastodon profile in August. The business introduced “rel=me” links, which allow two accounts to be related to one another by pointing links to one another.

Zuckerberg’s statement on 13 December 2023, represents Meta’s first concrete indication of its intention to integrate Threads into the decentralized social network architecture.