Instagram And Threads Join Fediverse To Fight X-Sentralization

Meta's Instagram and Threads have joined the Fediverse. (photo: special dock)

JAKARTA - Meta's Instagram and Threads have joined a group of social media platforms called Fediverse. The Fediverse is an independent platform federation that allows users on different servers to communicate with each other.

Although experts and analysts are still arguing behind the move, Meta says that this is in line with its commitment to decentralization and privacy. This claim can be proven by the current business climate.

Threads is Meta's answer to microblogging, a short-form media sharing paradigm where users post and interact with easy-to-diffage content. X is a no doubt leader in this space, with about 335 million monthly users by 2024.

However, this figure does not tell the whole story. When Elon Musk bought X in October 2022, the social media site had about 368 million monthly users. This shows a decline of 33 million users, or about 10% of the total number of users.

Much of this is associated with changing users over the polarization felt by X through Musk's increasing presence. Millions of people celebrate the purchase as, in their view, a win for free speech on the internet, while others leave X over what they see as the far-right takeover of the world's most popular microblogging platform.

Many of those who left the site supported decentralization offerings on the Fediverse - such as Mastodon, Pleroma, and Misskey - as a destination for those fleeing Twitter and its new management.

Currently, X remains the most popular microblogging site with long distances, but also in a clear state of decline. Both revenue and user number have fallen year after Musk's takeover. Although the number of users saw a brief spike in 2023, the next drop had removed the gain.

On the other hand, Threads doesn't seem to have anywhere else to develop other than rising. It currently has about 130 million monthly active users.

Meta's latest announcement that Threads and Instagram will join the Fediverse can be seen as a move against Musk and the X trend towards continued centralization.

Musk, the richest person in the world, has often stated that his intention with X is to build an 'application of everything' where users will communicate, monetize the media, make financial transactions, and host their personal and professional brands.

In contrast, the Fediverse is a series of decentralization protocols that allow genuine third-party integration and, as Meta has shown in its latest blog post, gives users control over their data.

As users continue to move away from Musk's centralized Big Tech offerings, the Everything' X app, decentralization offerings like Mastodon offer new views on microblogging ideas. And, arguably, the addition of Threads and Instagram brings with it the level of user activity that has never previously been seen in the Fediverse.