252
Threads spotted exploring ads, but says 'no immediate timeline' toward monetization
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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And this is why it’s not a good idea to federate with Threads.
Ads don't federate.
bold of you to assume that ads won't just be disguised as regular posts (and therefore federate)
Edit: after reading the article I heavily suspect ads will federate. As is they are just specially marked posts so I see no reason to think they won't federate.
My instance is defederated from threads. At the time I mildly disagreed with that decision. Federated ads would vindicate that decision. I don't need threads content that badly.
You can block entire servers yourself. No need for an instance to defederate.
Yes and this was my reasoning for saying it would be fine to federate. But I'll point out that federating ads would mean using my server's infrastructure to serve ads on behalf of someone else. That would cost the admin more money and would require more user donations to keep it going. So just being able to block isn't the necessary solution. Not sure that was even your point but I wanted to bring it up.
Marvel Comics could make an account on any Mastodon server and make posts to promote an upcoming movie. That's a regular post, containing promotional material. What makes it an ad (or a sponsored post) in IG/Threads terms is to push such posts to users via targeting algorithms who didn't subscribe to Marvel Comics. Threads cannot do that via ActivityPub, so your Mastodon server cannot serve Threads ads.
Okay. Well I'm not that worried until I see where things are headed. I can see a lot of ways for things to go badly, but no point in borrowing trouble over it.
“Borrowing trouble” is a great phrase :D
No, not bold. You don't get posts from accounts you don't follow.
Creating ads as if they are from a person would get Threads instabanned in the EU.
The example shown literally is a regular post simply marked "Sponsored" so it can be assumed that post would federate just like any other post. The only difference being the Sponsor marker likely being a Threads exclusive ActivityPub extension so unless other platforms implement that the post would show up as a regular post on e.g. Mastodon.
Them being in compliance with EU regulations while simultaneously blasting their ads into the Fediverse are not mutually exclusive. There are ways for them to do both. And to be fair here if the ads get federated they will likely be marked as such in some way so other Fediverse platforms should be able to filter the ads out easily.
You don't get posts from accounts you don't follow. My server's global feed only includes posts from accounts people on my server follow.
Just claiming "it will" is not a counter argument. That's not how the protocol works.
Instagram shows its users sponsored posts from accounts you don't follow. Threads will do the same for users of its website and apps. These posts will not magically show up on Mastodon from accounts one doesn't follow. If a Mastodon user would follow the profile of a brand, they'd get the posts from that account that would obviously contain promotion (just as any brand is free to join Mastodon right now and promote products there) but as @troed 100% correctly wrote: You don’t get posts from accounts you don’t follow.
Are you aware that a global feed exists on Mastodon?
No need for admins to defederate and take away the decision from grownups. Learn how Mastodon works instead of being hysteric because you believe unfounded conspiracy theories.
No need for admins at all, just have the users keep the place clean entirely by themselves, I'm sure that will work wonders /s. Let's not worry about people browsing the instance before making an account by which they could block such content. That's such a silly idea, who'd ever want to do that. No instead let's make it so the entire thing is only usable with an account... wait I've seen that somewhere else before.
As for me being "hysteric" about an unfounded "conspiracy theory" I'm not, as is this "feature" is not implemented and if you could read you would have spotted me being pretty clear about this likely being a nothing burger all the way at the start of the conversation. Here's the quote since you apparently missed it:
At the very beginning this was simply a discussion about the potential impacts of this "feature" threads wants to implement. The people coming in here completely naive and blind to any potential outcome to this other than "sunshine and rainbows" are you guys. I'm not saying Threads will push ads into the fediverse. I'm not even claiming they would do it in a malicious manner. I was simply refuting the claim that it could not happen. And despite your claim I am familiar enough with mastodon to know that can happen via tag relays at the very least.
For someone calling others uninformed about the fediverse I am astonished how uniformed you are about it yourself. I am by no means deeply familiar with the activitypub protocol or the fediverse despite running an instance but I know enough about it that I can say with absolute certainty that ads could and would find their way to the fediverse. Would that be somehow novel and new? No, relays are a known factor and by their very nature they do not filter out unwanted content. When an admin subscribes to a tag or instance relay they get all the content from that relay not only the stuff they want. As such ads would not be much different from a regular post made by a company. I never claimed such anyway. I only claimed if Threads made ads federate (if then most certainly with a marker that it is an ad for compliance reasons) they would end up in the global feeds unless the platform backends implement whatever mechanisms Threads would use to mark those ads in the activitypub data. I see no reason provided so far to discredit that possibilty. Learn to differentiate between hysteria and reasonable discussion before making wild accusations next time.
The Facebook code that outputs to fediverse using activity pub can put any posts it likes into that feed, because it's not mastodon it's custom and can absolutely inject ads.
That's why they have stealth enshittification techniques to disguise them.
Promotional posts don't magically show up on Mastodon for users who don't follow the brand account that posted them. That's not how Mastodon works.
If I were to follow Marvel Comics via Mastodon, boosted a post, then my followers would see the post, just as they would see the post if I made a screenshot from a Marvel tweet and posted that to Mastodon but Marvel posts would not just show up for random Mastodon users just because Marvel paid Meta to promote a post on Threads. Only Threads website and app users would see such posts.
It's amazing how uninformed Fediverse users are of the basics of how the Fediverse works.
Yeah, I don't really understand how you are getting downvoted for saying this in various comments.
Are people actually worried they would would see straight up ads coming into their mastodon feeds if their server federates with Threads? That's a pretty wild assumption to make.
If you follow the Coke brand account, then you'll see Coke brand posts (even then I wouldn't consider those "ads" in a traditional sense), but if you follow MBKHD or, hell, the Barack Obama account you won't have a sudden influx of ads for Pepsi or whatever in your feed.
Not only are they worried, they think that this is a foregone conclusion. They think it's more important to block Threads preemptively than to actually make an informed decision ... looking if Meta would actually somehow misuse federation and then block them, should that happen. I've seen Lemmy instances block Threads before they block any neo-nazi and pedo instances. Seriously, WTF. The hysteria is insane. Threads content can't currently even show up on Lemmy.
I mean they do. And I'm sure they will. But as long as you're not using Threads they can't be pushed into your feed.
I assume in the future there will probably be an option to "block Threads accounts except the ones that I specifically follow".
This is how the protocol works.
You only get content from those you follow (in your home feed).
Your server's local feed will contain all posts made by users on your server.
Your server's global feed will contain all posts from users someone on your server follows.
Note how #3 isn't actually a global feed. Spin up your own server at home and it will be the same as your home feed when you're the only users.
Even if you federate with Threads, there's simply no way for them to "inject ads" into any of these feeds.
That's what I said
Sorry, I forgot to make it clear that the point was that your "maybe in the future..." is already the same as how it works now. No difference.
Not necessarily. I follow hashtags. Hashtags have been known to be abused by advertisers. If an advertiser uses a hashtag that I follow, it will appear in my feed. In my example, that wouldn't be possible.
They can also appear in the "explore" section if it received sufficient engagement.