Technology

But conditions are different now. Government officials mulling how to regulate large tech platforms today often turn to the idea of requiring interoperability, says Georgios Petropoulos, a researcher at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Threads is not currently available in Europe, due at least in part to uncertainties related to the EU’s new Digital Markets Act and other regulations—especially rules related to how Threads user data will interact with data on other platforms, Petropoulos believes. The new EU rules also contain provisions on interoperability that are still being hashed out.

Ah ha, this is the first great explanation I’ve heard for why Meta may be interested in joining the fediverse. Avoiding regulators.

I personally am excited to see Meta join the fediverse, and I think the design and implementation is strong enough to support both people who want to see Threads content and people who don't, and that's really exciting to me.

While Meta and the people it'll bring with it is something I want to avoid, I gotta respect it when a massive company is willing to adopt an open standard they're not in control of.