{
  "path": "/threads-on-mastodon",
  "site": "at://did:plc:xgvzy7ni6ig6ievcbls5jaxe/site.standard.publication/3mgfwckliwc2m",
  "tags": [
    "threads",
    "mastodon",
    "social media",
    "activitypub",
    "fediverse",
    "phanpy"
  ],
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "title": "Threads on Mastodon and The Bright Future of the Fediverse",
  "description": "This is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences that went above and beyond my expectations.",
  "publishedAt": "2024-04-10T19:15:08.000Z",
  "textContent": "Last month, Meta's Threads took its first step into the Fediverse, a promise they made to users at launch. While I don't want to dive too far into the technology, which is something I will do in a future post, this basically means I can follow Threads users that opt-in to Fediverse integration through my Mastodon account. \n\nSo, I did what any \"normal\" person would do: I went to my Mastodon account and added anyone I follow on Threads who had their Fediverse switch turned on so I could see their posts on Mastodon. And then I started taking notes. \n\nThis is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences that went above and beyond my expectations.\n\nNothing is Perfect\n\nTo start, this post isn't a long-winded way of me saying I hate the Threads experience. On the contrary, they've made some delightful choices. It's why I've been so active on the platform for this long. \n\nMy current need to look outward is more focused on what they haven't built and likely never will. Nothing is perfect for everyone and neither is Threads.\n\nFirstly, the app always defaults to the For You feed. I think this makes sense for most users, but it would be nice if power users were given the ability to default to a chronological feed.\n\nSpeaking of the chronological feed - frankly, it's not useful. It skips posts without explanation and there are no replies, which means no conversations in that feed. You only see replies serendipitously in the For You feed so only Threads can decide which conversations you take part in.\n\nThere are also no lists. From the way it sounds, there will never be lists. I can go on for hours about what makes lists useful - and boy, have I - but I'll save that for another day. The point is, I use lists to make sense of the chronological feed - almost like a hand-crafted For You feed that...no, we're not doing this today.  The point is, I need lists and Threads doesn't seem to be interested in catering to that need.\n\nFinally, the main reason I'm considering my options is the limited developer API. To put it short: there will be no third-party clients or augmentations of your Threads feed. The feeds Threads gives you are the feeds you'll have to live with. And, as I mentioned above, those feeds are not doing what I need them to do. \n\nAnd so, I looked to the next biggest thing that will let me interact with Threads while giving me more options for how I consume my content: Mastodon.\n\nKnown Limitations\n\nIn this first phase, however, there is an important issue that will be ironed out once integration is complete: while Mastodon users can interact with Threads users, Threads users cannot interact back. That means: \n\n1. Threads users can't reply to Mastodon comments or see them in Threads.\n2. Threads users can be followed by Mastodon accounts but they will not be notified nor can they follow back.\n3. Likes from Mastodon are not counted toward your Threads like count\n\nMoreover, as of writing this post, 189 out of 1524 of my Threads follow list is captured. While there may be more than what I currently have, that's about 12% of my follow list. Based on my conversations with various users, it seems like there are three popular reasons for why this may be the case:\n\n1. It isn't rolled out in their region yet but they plan on switching it on.\n2. They don't like the one-way integration and are waiting for full interaction with Mastodon users.\n3. They don't like that there's a chance their post will remain indexed on Mastodon even if they delete it.\n\nThe first two will be solved, but the last one isn't going to be easy and it's not in Meta's hands. I hope this changes in the future but I would understand if certain users didn't want to be spread across the internet that way.\n\nBut, knowing all this, I pushed forward to customize my experience.\n\nOrganizing the Chaos\n\nSo here I was - a Mastodon user who has about half his following list sourced from Threads. I started by moving all my Threads follows into a separate list so that it wouldn't fill my main Mastodon feed. I used the handy Mastodon List Manager, segregated my Follows by domain, and added the whole threads.net section to the Threads list. Then I switched on the Advanced UI (think TweetDeck for Mastodon) to get my real-time multi-column feed. \n\nThe reason for separating Threads users was to see how a real-time chronological feed for my Threads would actually look like. I also had to interact with Threads posts differently since it's only one-way interaction for this phase - I had to pop out of the Mastodon experience by opening the post on Threads and interacting there. Luckily, most Mastodon clients - including the default one - make this pretty easy and by separating my Threads follows in an independent list, I could be consistent with that workflow.\n\nAs expected, the chronological feed became overwhelming to follow. But there was an easy solution - I used lists. This made my feed easier to consume and it enabled me to focus on specific topics based on my mood. When I wanted to chat with online friends in the Tech Threads community, I would stay in a feed dedicated to that. If I was catching up on tech news, I would stay in that feed. When I was ready for heavier news, I would head over to my politics feed.\n\nIt was nice to able to decide what kind of content I wanted to consume rather than getting an algorithm's scrambled egg of the day that doesn't consider what mood I'm in. But not all was perfect in my Mastodon experience, even if I put aside the one-way Threads limitation. \n\nThe main downside was that its UI is utility-first, design second. And coming from the polished Threads experience it left me a little unsatisfied. For instance: if a user does a multi-post (a thread), they come in reverse chronological order; the same is for conversations. In my opinion, threads and conversations should be grouped together in the UI to keep context. This, along with some other nits, left me wanting more.\n\nThe Client Search\n\nBut there's a major benefit to Mastodon: it provides a full API so that third-party developers can augment the experience for specific needs, even niche ones like mine. The lists manager I spoke about earlier is one example of this. Flipboard is another for a links-focused view. And the many - there are SO many - third-party clients are all examples of how a user's needs can be met even if the default options don't.\n\nWith an ample amount of choices, I set out to find a client that matched my needs. I knew I wanted a few things that the Threads and Mastodon core experiences weren't giving me: a prettier UI, a real-time feed, and better feed grouping.\n\nAnd I had a final ask: an easy way to catch-up if I hadn't looked at my feed for, say, 8 hours (a boy's gotta sleep, right?). What I wanted was something that did what a For You feed does but doesn't leave me endlessly scrolling. I figured I would find or build a separate tool since most clients would likely not serve that and there was no reason to limit my search for something so niche.\n\nThere were numerous options that I enjoyed using quite a bit. To keep things short, here were my favorites:\n\n1. Elk - a minimalist PWA that makes some fantastic choices for the UX\n2. Moshidon - an Android app that makes it easy to swipe between lists\n3. Focus - a highly customizable Android app that includes a widget\n\nI don't have an iOS device, but I've heard Mammoth, Ice Cubes, and Ivory are all great options as well. But, as good as these experiences were, in one way or another they didn't scratch my itch.\n\nAnd then, I met Phanpy.\n\nHello, Phanpy\n\nFrom the moment I saw Phanpy, I knew this checked far more boxes than I was expecting any client to.\n\nPhanpy can be as simple or a complex as you want it to be. Want a single feed that refreshes when you explicitly ask it to? Default. Want multiple-columns hidden behind a tab bar? Easy. Want a multi-column, real-time chronological feed? Go for you extremely-online feed addict (it me).\n!Phanpy's Column OptionsPhanpy's column options\nIt most certainly doesn't stop there. As it brings new posts in real-time, it also groups conversations and threads so you don't have to click around to get all the context you need to understand a single post. Here are two examples: the first is a thread with replies in between and the second is a three-post thread.\n!Conversations and threads in PhanpyConversations and threads in Phanpy\nAnd sometimes there's multiple conversations happening at once - here's an example of a lively discussion under a post:\n!Multiple conversations under a post on PhanpyMultiple conversations under a post on Phanpy\nClean and easy to understand. And when a reply pops up in the feed, it brings contextual groups with it. It makes the chronological feed so much easier to follow, especially when you're running a multi-column dashboard. To make things cleaner, original posts, replies, and reposts are all color coded to white, yellow, and purple respectively which helps break down the complex nature of microblogging feeds.\n!Post in white, reply in yellow, and boost in purplePost in white, reply in yellow, and boost in purple\nSo I'd found it: a pretty client that grouped posts in a real-time feed while making it easy for me to pop in and out of the Threads UI. And then Phanpy threw this in front of me:\n!Phanpy's "Catch Up" FeaturePhanpy's \"Catch Up\" Feature\nWhat you're seeing in the GIF above is \"Catch Up\", a Beta feature of Phanpy that collects all the posts in your feed between 1-12 hours (configurable per catch-up) and organizes them in a more sane way. You can filter by user or by post type (single, repost, or reply), sort by various attributes, and it extracts out all the links so you can see what popular news stories were filling your timeline for that period of time.\n\nIt's doing what a For You feed attempts to do but gives you the power of how you consume it. It also saves these ",
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}