It could prove to be an important move from Meta.
  1. On my Threads profile, I changed my featured link to be my Mastodon profile URL.
  2. Then, on my Mastodon profile, I changed one of the featured links to be my Threads profile URL.
  3. After I saved that change, my Mastodon profile showed a green verification checkmark next to my Threads profile URL. Success!
  • Eddie Trax@dmv.socialEnglish
    30·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for sharing the info as I’m sure there will be a few folks to jump on this. Personally, I don’t want anywhere near this.

    • SpookyAlex03@lemmy.zipEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      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

    • RxBrad@lemmings.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    91·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    But it also represents something bigger: an actual Threads feature from Meta that connects with decentralized social media.

    I got this to work in just a few minutes on my Mastodon profile, meaning that a URL to my Threads account now has a green checkmark.

    “We’ve also rolled out Threads support for rel=me links to help you verify your identity on platforms like Mastodon,” Mosseri said.

    I’ll admit that I didn’t know what rel=me links were when I read Mosseri’s post, so I found a Mastodon support page that explained how they work.

    If your eyes are glazing over reading all that, never fear: I found it was ultimately pretty straightforward to make my Mastodon account show a verified checkmark for my Threads profile.

    But now that the company rolled out this verification feature that works on non-Threads platforms, I’m starting to believe that we’ll actually see ActivityPub support in Threads proper someday.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • SpookyAlex03@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Tldr this isn’t really anything new for Mastodon. If you link to a website in your profile, you could verify you own that website (or are a representative of it, ie writer for news or a blog) by having that site link back to your profile with a special rel="me" attribute. The new thing is that Threads now also supports these links, so linking your Threads account on your Mastodon account can show you have verified that you own that Threads account. This also works with any other site that supports rel=me links for verification.

      I agree with all y’all that Threads is EEE, but I think this particular feature is a really good thing and I’d love to see more sites implement this as a really simple way to cross-verify (ownership of) accounts

    • Slyme@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      All they’re doing is adding rel=“me” to featured links on Threads account pages, I don’t see what issue this creates tbh.

    • RxBrad@lemmings.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      Against what? Against people having “verified” ✅ checkmarks next to websites they put in their Mastodon profile?

      Because that’s all this is.

  • SpookyAlex03@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    While I’m sure Threads as a whole is an attempt at EEE, I don’t think this is that big a deal. In fact, I’d like to see every other site support it, too

    As the article mentions, verification on Mastodon is just verifying ownership of some links in your profile (not the entire account), which just checks the target site for a special link back to your profile (specifically adding the rel="me" attribute to it). Now when you add a link to your Threads profile, if it sees a rel=me link pointing back your Threads profile, it will add the rel=me on its end as well. Following the steps in the article, Mastodon will then see the rel=me attribute on the link to your profile there, and show the link as verified, just the same as if it saw any other rel=me link on any other site. And any other site that supports link verification the same way will also now be able to verify ownership of your Threads profile.

    Using rel=me links like this is a great simple way to cross-verify all your other accounts and websites without needing to sign in or authorize any access. Just point the two sites at each other and violà!

  • RxBrad@lemmings.worldEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    This story is such a huge nothingburger. You can put rel="me" in the meta tags for your Threads account. Whoopty freakin’ doo.

    I get it. Meta sucks. It really does.

    But the reactions here only prove that most of the people carrying pitchforks don’t actually know what it is they’re against, aside from “Zuckerberg lizardman bad”.

    • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Because they want the content that only a huge platform can provide.

      You don’t. That’s fine. The beauty of the Fediverse is you can choose an instance whose policies you like. You do not have to demand that everyone else has exactly the same preferences as you do.