Threads on Mastodon and The Bright Future of the Fediverse

Now that Threads has joined the Fediverse, "I can follow Threads users that opt-in to Fediverse integration through my Mastodon account" - Anuj's journey, which apparently exceeded expectations, despite - or perhaps because of - his many issues with Threads (which I share): defaulting to For You, an impoverished chroni feed, no lists and a very limited developer API.

So can using Mastodon to connect to Threads help? Not for now, really, because "while Mastodon users can interact with Threads users, Threads users cannot interact back: reply to Mastodon comments or see them in Threads"; be notified when they're followed by Masto accounts nor follow back; nor see any Likes from Mastodon. Another issue: a post deleted on Mastodon stays online on Threads.

After following all his Threads follow on Mastodon, Anuj used lists and advanced UI to organise the firehose. But the one-way problem means he "had to pop out of the Mastodon experience by opening the post on Threads and interacting there", and Mastodon's interface is poor.

But at least "it provides a full API so that third-party developers can augment the experience", so he went looking for clients, eventually finding Phanpy.

It looks pretty impressive for power users. Which Threads is not for: "Meta's goal was always to build something Twitter-like, but for a billion users... the design decisions Threads is making are for those consumers... [who] open an app like Threads once every few hours, scroll until they're done with it, then move on."