- On my Threads profile, I changed my featured link to be my Mastodon profile URL.
- Then, on my Mastodon profile, I changed one of the featured links to be my Threads profile URL.
- After I saved that change, my Mastodon profile showed a green verification checkmark next to my Threads profile URL. Success!
This is the first and second step in the EEE cycle. They are embracing Mastodon by allowing instances to connect to theirs, and they are extending it by providing a verification service for all Mastodon users - a service which is conveniently dependent on Meta as a centralized authority. Eventually every celebrity will rely on Meta to get verified and Meta will use this to extinguish independent Mastodon instances.
This isn’t entirely true. Verification on Mastodon isn’t verifying your account for a shiny badge, it’s verifying ownership of sites that you link on your profile. If you add a link to a website, and that website links back to your profile, Mastodon will show that one link as verified. But that link needs a special
rel="me"
attribute to count for verification, which is what Threads now supports.I am absolutely sure Threads is an attempt at EEE, but this specific feature is a good thing imo. I’d love to see more sites support rel=me links for simple cross-platform account (ownership) verification
This isn’t connecting to ActivityPub any more than putting “rel=‘me’” in the head of an old Blogger blog is.
I guess the real question is this is “why?”. If they’re truly planning on federating, this is the equivalent of having your mastodon.social account show up as “verified” on your mastodon.world alt account.