Second Life on Threads

[Love Zhaoying]

Well, Threads is here! First thing I did was search for Second Life and follow it.

I haven't decided whether to make my Threads profile associated with my Second Life (Love Zhaoying). Probably a good idea if I mostly want to follow SL users and friends. ETA: Adding an account was easy, so I'm there as LoveZhaoying.

Hopefully, this is a "Twitter Killer".

I also hope this will be a "positive-leaning" platform and experience, like Mastodon.

What about you? Will you be joining Threads? If so, will you be using it more for Second Life, or FL/RL?

Edited July 6, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Katherine Heartsong]

Note for potential Threads users .. if you join Threads and then cancel your account, guess what Meta does? Since it's considered part of your Instagram account?

Cancels your Instagram account as well.

Yup.

See any number of the mainstream tech news sites for confirmation. The Supplemental Privacy Policy reads very clearly ... "You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account."

Edited July 6, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Note for potential Threads users .. if you join Threads and then cancel your account, guess what Meta does? Since it's considered part of your Instagram account?

Cancels your Instagram account as well.

Yup.

See any number of the mainstream tech news sites for confirmation. The Supplemental Privacy Policy reads very clearly ... "You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account."

I don't use Instagram..so that shouldn't really be a problem.  

However, since I am making both a "RL" and linking a separate "SL" Threads account, that should be OK - I should be able to cancel any "extra" account I created besides my "main" account. Right?

Edited July 6, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Love Zhaoying]

Hey guys, I'll stalk..I mean follow you on Threads if you tell me your @.

Anyway, there's no Threads "Website" - just apps? That's interesting and weird. 

I understand that "apps are the future" but..jeeze!

Get off my lawn!

 

[Qie Niangao]

9 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hey guys, I'll stalk..I mean follow you on Threads if you tell me your @.

Anyway, there's no Threads "Website" - just apps? That's interesting and weird. 

I understand that "apps are the future" but..jeeze!

Get off my lawn!

 

Apparently it's in the works. [EDIT: Here's a WaPo article with a reasonable run-down of what Threads has and hasn't. Paywalled, probably.]

I keep my RL off all Meta properties although I have some RL community responsibilities that require some minimal Facebook involvement. I do run an alt Instagram persona who trolls a former "president's" purported "daughter" so maybe I'll let her test Threads—after there's a web client.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Qie Niangao
gift article link eludes me

[Cedric Brown]

yea I read where there isn't a desktop version of threads, you must have an instagram account to join threads, its not legal in the EU due to the need to import from instagram.

 

[Cedric Brown]

The Zuck is trying to knock Elon out without having to climb into the octagon cage with him. 

[Qie Niangao]

2 minutes ago, Cedric Brown said:

The Zuck is trying to knock Elon out without having to climb into the octagon cage with him. 

Wasn't it Elmo's mom who wouldn't let him come out to play?

Some folks I used to follow on Twitter have commented that they're getting tired of trying potential replacements that are taking too long to thrive (e.g. Mastodon, Post.news, BlueSky). Zuck's genius may turn out to be jumping in just as patience is on the brink of exhaustion.

[Love Zhaoying]

We'll see if I end up using Threads more than Mastodon. 

I don't use Mastodon much, but when I went there due to the recent exodus from Twitter (I NEVER used Twitter), I saw some interesting people to follow (mostly from Second Life, and journalists).  So far I found 1 journalist to follow on Threads that I had followed on Mastodon.

The nice thing about Mastodon was I had found Second Life users to follow, which I never thought of before on teh Twit.   That plus, there are LGBT-friendly "instances" of Mastodon (servers, etc.).  With Threads it will be one big ball, not a Federation like Mastodon.

[Caeruleiae]

I don't even have a fb account-rl or sl-it's extremely doubtful I will join threads either. I am not a fan of social media to begin with though.

For someone born in my generation I sure do avoid most things my generation seems to be quite attached to. I was born in the wrong decade I think. 

[Gabriele Graves]

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What about you? Will you be joining Threads?

Nope.

[diamond Marchant]

What is a Threads post called? So far I have seen “post” and “message”. 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Caeruleiae said:

I don't even have a fb account-rl or sl-it's extremely doubtful I will join threads either. I am not a fan of social media to begin with though.

For someone born in my generation I sure do avoid most things my generation seems to be quite attached to. I was born in the wrong decade I think. 

Just FYI, Threads really connected to Instagram, not Facebook.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I heard on the news and that was my experience when I signed up.

So my point is - if someone WANTED to use Threads - they could use it without signing up for Facebook. They'd have to signup for Instagram.  (Unlike Facebook, I believe it lets you use "Fantasy Accounts" - not associated with who you are in RL.  At least it lets you add those, I did with no trouble.)

As always, someone will correct me if I am wrong, but that was my experience so far.

 

[Lewis Luminos]

I won't be using Threads. I jumped ship from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago; there's a presence from Second Life there too.  I like it a LOT better than Twitter, its much more engaging and doesnt have any stupid algorithms that stop me seeing the posts I really want to see.

Threads is just another corporate money/data-grab.

I'll pass.  

[Katherine Heartsong]

I must have had a Twitter account at one point for one of my RL hobbies, but cancelled that years ago. Am on Mastadon (in the art instance) witha few hundred followers now and post my latest RL prints for sale. Never Instagram or FB. But this will be an interesting thing to watch ... 10,000,000 sign ups in the first 8 hours *is* impressive.

Also, signing up for Instagram requires that you do not use a VPN. Another big no for me.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

I won't be using Threads. I jumped ship from Twitter to Mastodon about 6 months ago; there's a presence from Second Life there too.  I like it a LOT better than Twitter, its much more engaging and doesnt have any stupid algorithms that stop me seeing the posts I really want to see.

Threads is just another corporate money/data-grab.

I'll pass.  

Honestly, about the only thing I see "better" about Threads is it's centralized and not "Federations" like Mastodon.  Easier signup, and you can see everything without searching "outside your instance".  I do still thank @Coffee Pancake for showing me a good LGBT instance to choose on Mastodon.

[Love Zhaoying]

Took me a minute, but I found how to see "who I follow" on Mastodon so I can search for y'all on Threads: https://mstdn.plus/relationships

 

[Ardy Lay]

I wonder if "10,000,000 sign ups in the first 8 hours" is just them cloning Instagram accounts to Threads.

Maybe a post hanging on a thread is called a pel.

[Lewis Luminos]

Centralised isn't really better though. If a centralised network jumps the shark or disappears altogether, you're basically screwed. But if you join a federated one and it does the same, you can simply hop over to a new instance, take your followers with you and you can just carry on where you left off.  People make a big fuss about not knowing what instance to pick but it really doesn't matter in the long run. No matter which one you pick, you'll see the same stuff (only your "local" feed will be differnet but all that content is still visible everywhere else on the fediverse too). And you can switch or make duplicate accounts at any time.

Think of it like picking an email provider. I choose Hotmail, but I can still send and receive emails from people on Gmail or Yahoo or any small self-hosted email address.

And thats not even taking into consideration no ads, no algorithms and no taking yor data hostage.

Another complaint levied against Federated social media is that it's "not scalable". And that's true for one individual instance. There isn't one individual instance that can do it. But thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of small ones, can. Because if you run out of space... just host a new one. If one goes under due to insufficient funds, it doesn't matter. The rest of the network can still keep going without it, and its users will move to a new one.

The other complaint is "it's too difficult".  Well, I'm a 56-year-old non-technical person and I found it no more complicated than signing up for anything else (and its WAAYY less confusing than Discord). Theres only one extra step involved and that's picking an instance. A quick google search solves that.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Centralised isn't really better though. If a centralised network jumps the shark or disappears altogether, you're basically screwed. But if you join a federated one and it does the same, you can simply hop over to a new instance, take your followers with you and you can just carry on where you left off.  People make a big fuss about not knowing what instance to pick but it really doesn't matter in the long run. No matter which one you pick, you'll see the same stuff (only your "local" feed will be differnet but all that content is still visible everywhere else on the fediverse too). And you can switch or make duplicate accounts at any time.

Think of it like picking an email provider. I choose Hotmail, but I can still send and receive emails from people on Gmail or Yahoo or any small self-hosted email address.

And thats not even taking into consideration no ads, no algorithms and no taking yor data hostage.

Another complaint levied against Federated social media is that it's "not scalable". And that's true for one individual instance. There isn't one individual instance that can do it. But thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of small ones, can. Because if you run out of space... just host a new one. If one goes under due to insufficient funds, it doesn't matter. The rest of the network can still keep going without it, and its users will move to a new one.

The other complaint is "it's too difficult".  Well, I'm a 56-year-old non-technical person and I found it no more complicated than signing up for anything else (and its WAAYY less confusing than Discord). Theres only one extra step involved and that's picking an instance. A quick google search solves that.

I don't disagree.  But the "local feed" vs. the "central feed" and the speed of propagation (or lack of it) were my main annoyances with the distributed aspect of Mastodon.

Luckily, I can follow Second Life anywhere apparently.  Whoever runs the SL Social Media doesn't snooze.

[Ardy Lay]

Federated systems last forever..  Skype, IRC, USENET, Gopher...  if they have a userbase and a benefactor.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Ardy Lay said:

Federated systems last forever..  Skype, IRC, USENET, Gopher...  if they have a userbase and a benefactor.

Good point.  I was sad when (AOL's) AIM, and GAY.COM died. 

Those were my first "connect with and message people" platforms with instant messaging, etc. where I actually MET people for dating and friendship.

 

[Lewis Luminos]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I don't disagree.  But the "local feed" vs. the "central feed" and the speed of propagation (or lack of it) were my main annoyances with the distributed aspect of Mastodon.

Luckily, I can follow Second Life anywhere apparently.  Whoever runs the SL Social Media doesn't snooze.

I don't pay attention to either the local or the global feed on mastodon. I follow people, and I find those people by following hashtags of things I'm interested in. This also helps my feed stay clear of politics, which, for the sake of my sanity, I prefer to not engage with.

Hashtags are the key, at least for  now (searchable posts is coming, I believe).

[Istelathis]

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What about you? Will you be joining Threads?

No, social media in general has a negative impact on my health and unlike junk food I don't even enjoy it while consuming it.  I think the only social media I do like, is youtube, but is that even really considered social media?  

[Ayashe Ninetails]

8 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What about you? Will you be joining Threads?

Absolutely not. 

Lemme guess - you have to sign up with a real name, address, age, phone, street you grew up on, favorite color, link up all your other social profiles, everything you bought in the last week... 

Oh, not far off. Just took a peek at their app privacy and articles about such. NOPE.

Oh, and it's not on desktop, so that's a nope even if I wanted to join.