Zuckerberg's Threads also uses ActivityPub. What makes this decentralized protocol capable of challenging Web2 giants?

This morning, Threads was officially launched by Meta, a new application that directly competes with Twitter, following the release of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Threads not only named one of its functions after its competitor Twitter, but also emphasizes public conversation, which is very similar to Twitter. Some tech professionals even call it the "Twitter killer".

On the first day of launch, Threads showed impressive performance in its data. Zuckerberg stated that within 4 hours of launch, over 5 million users had registered on Threads. By the 7th hour of launch, over 10 million users had registered.

It is worth noting that before its official launch, many users speculated that they could log in to Threads using their Instagram accounts based on the application photo preview displayed in the Apple App Store. During a company-wide meeting last month, Meta executives revealed that Instagram Threads will integrate with the decentralized social media protocol ActivityPub, which is based on Mastodon. This also means that Threads content may be available on multiple servers, and Instagram usernames, followers, and other account information can be automatically moved to the new Threads app according to user needs.

On the login page of Threads, we can clearly see how Threads operates. In future versions, a new type of social media network called the Federated Universe will be added, allowing users to follow and interact with each other on different platforms such as Mastodon.

Related reading: "First experience | Is Zuckerberg's Twitter competitor Threads really better?"

What is the ActivityPub protocol?

Speaking of the decentralized protocol ActivityPub used by Threads, many people may not know about it, but when it comes to the federated social network Mastodon (known as "long-haired elephant" or "toothed mammoth" in Chinese), more people are familiar with it.

Last year, when Elon Musk laid off a large number of employees and modified Twitter's verification policy, causing a lot of confusion, the biggest beneficiary at that time was Mastodon. Mastodon, which had accumulated about 500,000 active users before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, suddenly saw a surge of "refugees" escaping from Twitter, with more than 130,000 new users added every day at its peak. In early December last year, the number of active users reached 2.5 million, and after January this year, the number of active users dropped to 1.8 million, still an order of magnitude higher than the protocols Lens and Nostr.

The number of Mastodon users is growing rapidly, and many celebrities have also found a "new home" on Mastodon, which has also caught the attention of Elon Musk. Twitter has started banning links to Mastodon. In a Twitter Spaces session, Elon Musk directly said, "Fucking post Mastodon all goddamn day long, I don't care."

And in the controversy of users fleeing Twitter, Mastodon seems to be the biggest winner. Mastodon's founder and CEO, a German programmer named Eugen Rochko, shared data showing that over the weekend, Mastodon's active user count increased by 294,000 and the amount of activity posted approximately doubled.

It is worth mentioning that Phil Daian, a member of the Ethereum Foundation, operates a cryptocurrency community called cryptodon.lol on Mastodon, and Vitalik has also joined it.

At the same time, many people are not optimistic about Mastodon, believing that Mastodon is a good product, but this product itself cannot represent the future of social networks. The protocol that can represent the future of this field is ActivityPub.

Returning to our main topic, what makes Threads and Mastodon special is that they both use and are based on the ActivityPub protocol.

Let users shuttle between various islands

In the social future outlined by traditional social media giants, our Twitter account data is controlled by Twitter, Instagram account data is controlled by Instagram, and Youtube account data is controlled by Youtube. Each social media company is an island, and each social media platform requires a separate account registration. Social media companies cannot exchange account data.

ActivityPub's solution to this problem is simple: each server (instance) is similar to an email server, helping users receive and send messages, and hosting identities. It standardizes communication between servers, allowing freely joined servers to communicate with each other; it also standardizes communication between clients and servers, allowing users to access different servers on the same app. This provides great freedom for both server operators and users.

Hereby, using the ActivityPub protocol service, social network users can travel between various islands.

Looking back on the years since the birth of social networks, there have been a series of social network protocols that emphasize openness, such as OStatus, pump.io, Open Social, Pubsubhubbub, WebFinger, ActivityStreams, XMPP, RSS, OpenID, and many others, most of which are not well known to the public. At certain times, even some tech giants have supported these protocols.

The design concept of ActivityPub can be traced back to the birth of social networks, and the initial idea came from Fediverse. The idea behind Fediverse is also very simple: a group of servers form a decentralized network and exchange information with each other. Based on this idea, different software and protocols such as GNU social, OStatus, and Mastadon have emerged, accumulating nearly 20 years of experience in exploring distributed social networks, which can be said to be the foundation of ActivityPub.

ActivityPub was first released five years ago and, after drawing on the experience and design of software such as GNU social and protocols such as OStatus in the Fediverse, it became a W3C recommended standard. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is essentially the governing body of the Web, responsible for overseeing protocol standards. ActivityPub defines a decentralized social networking protocol for client applications and the servers that connect them. The benefit to users is interoperability between services that adopt this protocol.

Specifically, for example, Flipboard and Medium have also established a Mastodon server on ActivityPub, and have begun inviting some users and planners to post on the main platform. As long as the server complies with ActivityPub, anyone can follow my Flipboard and Medium accounts from Mastodon without creating an account or downloading a new application.

At the same time, if you like Flipboard posts from ActivityPub, you can embed the post on the Flipboard page and even display it in the original creator's Mastodon application. After posting a comment, the content will appear in the form of a Mastodon reply.

This is not just simple embedded content, but true interoperability.

If Threads and Mastodon achieve interoperability in the future, deleting content posted on Threads will not be visible on Mastodon. This is because a delete event will be transmitted to other ActivityPub instances, but if an instance does not support delete, the content can still be retained.

除了 Threads and Mastodon，目前正在使用 ActivityPub 协议的社交网络还有：Nextcloud：用于文件托管的邦联式服务；PeerTube，一种用于视频的邦联式服务；Friendica 社交网络软件在 2019.01 版中实现了 ActivityPub；Mobilizon，来自 Framasoft 的事件计划软件；Pixelfed，类似于 Instagram 的邦联式照片共享平台；Pleroma 是与 ActivityPub 兼容，资源需求低的微博平台；Misskey 是开源的去中心化微博服务。

Of course, at present, ActivityPub is far from perfect and there is a huge room for improvement. It often goes wrong and may even be killed by malicious attacks on corporate interests. In the current competition to reshape social media, there are also many other players besides ActivityPub, such as social newcomers Artifact and Substack Notes, who have established their own closed platforms. Jack Dorsey, who left Twitter, supports the new social protocol BlueSky and the Nostr protocol. In the Web3 circle, the hot social protocols Farcaster and Lens have also emerged.

Various emerging protocols all hope to create their own open protocols and lead the social race. But why did Threads, from Web2 giants, choose the ActivityPub protocol?

Web2 大厂出身的 Threads 为什么选择 ActivityPub？

Why did Threads, a company with a Web2 background, choose ActivityPub?

First of all, what we can think of is that using ActivityPub, especially the communication standards between servers, can expand the original social network of Meta, help communicate with other servers, and allow users to reach more people.

Matters-lab co-founder Liu Guo strongly agrees with this view. In his opinion, ActivityPub is currently the most mature and widely used decentralized social protocol. As a newcomer, Threads can make good use of the network effects that ActivityPub originally brings by choosing it.

In a conversation with BlockBeats, Liu Guo said, "Compared to other similar decentralized protocols such as Nostr and AT Protocol, ActivityPub is mainly superior in maturity and is also a recommended standard by W3C. ActivityPub has many clients and a very comprehensive vocabulary, which can be used to define almost all product logic, and the mental model is also very simple (actor model). Compared to other ActivityPub clients, Mastodon's UI/UX is slightly better, and it integrates the other protocols in a suitable way (such as web finger)."

Other than that, what other reasons led Threads, a Web2 giant, to choose ActivityPub? Liu Guo believes that Meta also realizes that users care about privacy and data ownership, especially after Twitter's acquisition. Therefore, they chose to use a decentralized social protocol.

So, what does Threads choosing ActivityPub mean for decentralized social protocols or web3 protocols?

Liu Guo believes that this is a good reminder to return to the essence. It seems that Meta understands very clearly what users need. Users need a good user experience and a social protocol that can connect multiple clients, and none of these require blockchain. Blockchain can provide a good identity system, but it needs to be linked with off-chain social protocols to be useful to users, and the latter is already a relatively mature field and concept.

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