If you recently downloaded Meta’s new Threads app — a social media platform some say rivals Twitter — you may have noticed it plans to join the fediverse.
Before you can join Threads, a disclaimer pops up: “Future versions of Threads will work within the fediverse, a new type of social media network that allows people to follow and interact with each other on different platforms.”
What exactly does that mean?
Imagine posting a tweet on Facebook or liking an Instagram reel on TikTok.
The fediverse — a combination of the words federation and universe — is a loose collective of decentralized servers that operate using open source standards. Unlike traditional social networks, the fediverse allows users to connect and communicate with others seamlessly across multiple platforms.
Threads, a new social platform by Meta, signed up more than 100 million users in its first five days. (Ashley Fraser/CBC)
Proponents say it’s similar to the early days of the internet, when Big Tech hadn’t yet created social media sites that rely on advertising and use algorithms to keep you scrolling on their platforms.
“You can have an account on one service and you can post on other services. Other people can read your stuff, they can connect to you. You can have relationships and friendships — family relationships that don’t depend on which actual service you’re using. So that’s the fediverse promise,” said Evan Prodromou, an entrepreneur and technologist based in Montreal.
Think of it like email. There are many different email domains available, from Gmail to Outlook. Even if you use a different service than your friend, you can still communicate with one another.
“We’re using social networking for what it was originally meant for, which is giving us better social relationships.… So it’s not about the platforms, it’s about the people,” said Prodromou.
How did the fediverse start?
Prodromou is often credited as a pioneer of the fediverse, although he points out it’s based on patterns and structures that go back to the very beginning of the internet.
In 2008, he created a website called identi.ca, which was a distributed social network similar to Twitter. At the time, blogs were popular and people would use software like a feed aggregator to bring them together in one place.
“My kind of incentive in building identi.ca and the original federated social networks was to take that experience and bring it into that social network interface,” said Prodromou.
What made identi.ca different was the development of a standard that let people download the software, install it on their own servers and then communicate directly with their users, as if they were on the same server.
Another breakthrough was the release of Mastodon in 2017 by German developer Eugen Rochko.
Evan Prodromou, who lives in Montreal, helped create ActivityPub, a decentralized social networking protocol that much of the fediverse is developed on. (Submitted by Evan Prodromou)
Similar to Twitter, Mastodon is a micro-blogging platform and one of the larger self-hosted social networking spaces on the fediverse. Small groups or individuals run independent communities or “instances” on their own servers, and they have their own terms of service and moderation rules.
In 2018, the organization that set standards for the World Wide Web, known as the W3C, wanted to have a modern standard for distributed social networks like Mastodon.
They started a group — co-chaired by Prodromou — called the Social Web Working Group.
The group developed the standards that make up ActivityPub, an open, decentralized social networking protocol that much of the fediverse is now developed on, including Mastodon and other services, like Pixelfed, a photo-sharing platform similar to Instagram.
Why are people moving to the fediverse?
When scrolling on Facebook, TikTok or other mainstream social platforms, you might notice content from accounts you don’t follow. They use an algorithm to show you content based on data they’ve gathered on you, including what you’ve previously engaged with.
The fediverse doesn’t rely on algorithms or data scraping in the same way. Mastodon, for example, will show you the content of people and instances you follow in chronological order.
This creates a less stressful environment, Prodromou says, because your feed isn’t designed to keep you on the platform.
The servers that make up the fediverse cost money to run, but revenue from advertisements aren’t the primary way of maintaining them. Individuals and groups have their own methods, including subscription fees or donations.
“There’s no one entity who can say: ‘Everybody has to read our ads and everyone has to give us their data,’ because we’ve got that distributed set of control. So it gives us more control over what we do,” said Prodromou.
The fediverse is customizable and users can follow or create their own instances that appeal to their interests and values, explained Brian Keegan, a computational social scientist with the University of Colorado Boulder.
“By joining different kinds of instances or moving your account between different kinds of instances, you’re able to really vote or elect if this is the model of content, moderation and governance that I want to have around my social media.”
This creates an environment where users have more control of what they want to see and are less likely to be exposed to content like misinformation and hate speech seen on other platforms, Keegan said.
Mastodon, also seen as a competitor to Twitter, allows users to post updates and see what others are posting in their feed, much like other micro-blogging social platforms. (CBC )
With that control, however, the federated model can allow for people to fall into echo chambers, he said. “There are probably some necessary social changes that we’ll need to make on the fediverse in order to improve that.”
Keegan points out that if you do have a problem with something you’re seeing, content moderation decisions are made by whoever is running the server that you’re on. So you may have more success flagging a concern there compared to trying to appeal to an administrator working under the umbrella of a Big Tech company.
Is Meta welcome?
Both Prodromou and Keegan see Meta’s potential move to the fediverse as an opportunity to grow and expand the space.
In addition to potentially making the interface less clunky and more user friendly, Keegan said a larger platform would bring more users to interact with.
“By having an organization like Meta express an interest, and building and scaling infrastructure and experiences and apps, that might allow for more people to join the fediverse,” said Keegan.
Currently, the fediverse has around 12 million users. By comparison, more than 100 million users signed up for Meta’s Threads in the first five days of its launch.
Unlike Meta and Twitter, led by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk respectively, networks on the fediverse aren’t typically run by a company or led by a CEO. (Manu Fernandez/The Associated Press)
But some fediverse users are set against a major tech company joining.
Keegan said there’s a movement of Mastodon users who have started an “anti-Meta Fedi pact,” pledging to block any instances owned by Meta.
“I think people see Meta coming in, and potentially this risk of them bringing this really poor track record, and destroying or deteriorating this really interesting and exciting space that’s really been built from the bottom up by a lot of diverse, different kinds of communities,” said Keegan.
Meta hasn’t said when Threads will join the fediverse and hasn’t released details about what its presence will look like, beyond using the ActivityPub protocol so it can talk to other servers.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
