Why isn't anyone talking about this? It looks like Meta wants to compete with Twitter with a new Instagram microblogging app which will probably be compatible with Mastodon
Key Point of the article:
*“Soon, our app will be compatible with certain other apps like Mastodon,” Instagram’s slide says. “Users on these other apps will be able to search for, follow and interact with your profile and content if you’re public, or if you’re private and approve them as followers.” *
Instagram was the last one I expected to join the fediverse. They actually actively blocked 3rd party clients before and even shut them down.
My guess is that meta sees another one of their social media sites go down the drain and this time they want to try something to stop it.
My guess is that they want to use the already established userbase of Mastodon as a starting point. There's going to be more content from the start and also more users. If they would make a new app with no users they would need to start from scratch which is more risky.
They said it is going to work with Mastodon but we don't know if they are going to federate it. They are most likely to do so since they are actively talking about "decentralization" but who knows
In the article it says that people from Mastodon are able to interact with this. So it kinda seams like they are just making a new frontend based and their own instance of Mastodon. We just don't know if we are able to access their instance without their app.
Fair point! We just don't know the extent of the federation