You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse
You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse
Joe Biden's official account is now connected to the Fediverse, thanks to Threads. We'll see if anything comes of it.
Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.
I don't consider being on Threads as being "on the fediverse". My definition of the fediverse is servers that follow the Activity Pub protocol to interact with each other. You might disagree with that definition, but Threads only lets us "follow" (view-only) certain of their accounts (only about 2000 out of millions) from Mastodon. Those accounts do not see any replies to their post from the fediverse, or any fediverse posts at all for that matter--we are invisible to them. So no, he's not "on the fediverse", he's on Threads. I doubt he knows the fediverse even exists.
Thing is, for federation to work, his team had to opt into it. The fact that his statuses and profile render natively in Mastodon and Akkoma are a pretty strong start.
I'd like to see Meta put their money where their mouths are, and finish the integration. I think we'll probably see that happen sooner rather than later.
Personally I hope they never do, though it does look likely. Like many pre-November '22 old-time Mastodon et.al. fedizens, I came to the fediverse specifically because I didn't want to have anything with FB/Meta/Twitter or the other commercial, "engagement"-based, enshittified social media.
It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified, with half of it eagerly welcoming their new overlords (why don't they just join Threads?) and the other half resisting. The half that doesn't federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new "real fediverse" where people can go to live free from corporate interference.
If I can follow some mainstream entertainment accounts from Mastodon, I'm fine with that. I dislike having to log onto Twitter or Threads just to find out what some motorsports teams are up to.
I'm surprised the white house doesn't just host a mastodon server. I'm sure they consider using unvetted software to communicate to be a security risk, but it's no less a risk to put your communication channels in the hands of a third party.
Biden: Tell me again what a femcel is
Staff: Please just let's go back to Tiktok
Biden: What's a fursona
I'd actually love to see something like this happen, as it seems to be something European governments and officials are embracing. To have something similar for the United States would be incredible.
I think at the moment, there's a real need for advocates, consultants, and vendors that can actually cater to government entities here. I would imagine there's probably some crazy data requirements needed for US Government Officials.
Iād actually love to see something like this happen, as it seems to be something European governments and officials are embracing.
I had the chance to ask the responsible person of the EU commission about this at the last CCC congress and sadly he was much less optimistic. The answer basically boilded down to: as long as someone else funds and maintains it they are willing to put an intern or similar at work to post updates, but currently all these efforts are time limited and when funding for the 3rd party to operate them runs out, these efforts are likely to die off quickly. The actual buy in and willingness to operate their own social media infrastructure seems to be very low.
Even better, that should be their primary social network site. It's inherently restricted to valid government accounts and under their control so all the right data protection and preservation procedures can be followed. Then Threads users can follow potus@socia.whitehouse.gov or whatever.
I wish the US was even trying to be as good as Europe
Truth Social is a Mastodon server. Does this count during the upcoming Trump presidency?
On one hand I hate all the threads hype that is happening (and am for threads blocking).
On the other hand I donāt think Iāve seen a bigger example of why threads federating is maybe a big deal. POTUS posts on oneās mastodon server, with two-way reply federation coming (?), which can be on a small or individual server, does not ever happen without Threads doing this.
Like, if youāre an author of the protocol like Evan, hoping for your system to make it, POTUS posting over it is certainly a milestone and Iād imagine itās not at all negligible for the likes of Evan.
Thing is, it was just a button click on Threads because Zuck decided to provide it, which is still shit.
yeah its a big deal because of the spillover effort on how much easier this makes conversations with other gov officials about setting up a fedi server. I'm somewhat involved in this process at this point, and now being able to say that 'biden is on the fediverse' really impacts lobbying for the fediverse more broadly
Uhh... have they not been paying attention to the bans against Threads? Somebody over there isn't doing their job.
Our existence is a rounding error.
They probably thought they'd reach a greater number of people. They're probably right.
Rams through major bribery to kill TikTok and try to force a sell to Facebook.
Immediately sets up a Threads account.
Tik Tak Toe.
Meta just pays enough.
Looks like someoneās been squatting on @POTUS@lemmy.world & @Potus@lemmy.ml since last year.
Genuine LOL.
2.7M followers displayed on Threads; 2.8M on Mastodon.
When you visit a Lemmy community, only its home server displays the actual subscriber number. If you visit the community from a different server, it shows only the number of subscribers from your server. That's the reason I put one of those subscriber count badges in the side bar, so everyone can see the correct number.
I highly doubt that there are 2.8M members on my instance (not to mention potus subscribers)
Aaaaaannnd... Blocked.
Why would I want to follow either account?
I hope they know DMs aren't secure on Fediverse.
I don't think the president is using DMs.
Few places have secure DMs.