In June 2023, when Threads announced their plans to federate with other Fediverse instances, there was a good deal of debate around whether smaller instances should allow federation or block it pre-emptively. As one of the admins of woof.group, I wrote about some of the potential risks and rewards of federating with Threads. We decided to wait and see.

In my queer and leather circles, Facebook and Instagram have been generally understood as hostile environments for over a decade. In 2014, their “Real Name” policy made life particularly difficult for trans people, drag queens, sex workers, and people who, for various reasons, needed to keep their real name disconnected from their queer life. My friends have been repeatedly suspended from both platforms for showing too much skin, or using the peach emoji. Meta’s moderation has been aggressive, opaque, and wildly inconsistent: sometimes full nudity is fine; other times a kiss or swimsuit is beyond the line. In some circles, maintaining a series of backup accounts in advance of one’s ban became de rigueur.

I’d hoped that federation between Threads and the broader Fediverse might allow a more nuanced spectrum of moderation norms. Threads might opt for a more conservative environment locally, but through federation, allow their users to interact with friends on instances with more liberal norms. Conversely, most of my real-life friends are still on Meta services—I’d love to see their posts and chat with them again. Threads could communicate with Gay Fedi (using the term in the broadest sense), and de-rank or hide content they don’t like on a per-post or per-account basis.