It’s been a wild week for the open social web

Eight months since the Migration started and this week has been one of the most eventful for the Fediverse since. In case you missed it, Threads, by Meta, was released in the US, without ActivityPub support at this time, and has already amassed over 30 million users in the space of a couple days.

And on top of that, Twitter introduced view rate limits to "address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation". The rate limits caused a surge in new account sign ups and a huge increase in traffic to Fediverse instances over the weekend.

Fastly is committed to helping the Fediverse thrive. We care deeply about the open web, and are working directly with oss projects like Mastodon and Kbin, instance admins, and more to help them scale.

Nobody knows exactly what Threads means for the Fediverse, but we all know it means new challenges for scaling the open social web. So here’s what we know we can do right now:

For all Fedizens:

1. Don’t panic! Very little is known at this time about how Threads will implement ActivityPub, or what federating with Threads will look like, so stay engaged and thoughtful, but don’t worry too much. We can focus instead on what new possibilities exist.
2. Be kind. This is a scary and exciting time for the Fediverse. It’s been almost a year with very little rest for the developers, system administrators, and community managers who keep it running. The people building this place are tired, so be nice. They’re carrying a lot.
3. Lend a hand. There are so many ways you can contribute to, and help build, the social web. If you can code — great! But that’s far from the only way to contribute. You can volunteer or donate your time or money to your instance admin or to a Fediverse project like Mastodon, Kbin, etc.

For users:

1. Vote with your feet and voice. I love this recommendation from Lily Hay Newman at Wired — Don't Join Threads—Make Threads Join You. If you have concerns about the way Threads is building for the Fediverse, let them know and don’t sign up. Or if you have concerns about the way your instance admin is talking about Threads, move to a new instance. That’s what’s so amazing about the Fediverse; you are in control.

For instance admins:

1. You’re not alone. If you’re an instance admin that’s worried about the firehose of traffic and new users that federating with Threads will bring, just know that you’re not alone. There’s a supportive community of server owners in the Mastodon Discord (access to the Discord is a perk for Patreon donors), a network for Fediverse developers with a Matrix chat, and millions of people across the Fediverse to help and support you.
2. Write a federation policy and communicate it. If you don’t have a repeatable policy about the kind of instances you will and won’t federate with, now is as good a time as yesterday to write one. (Hachyderm published their thoughts on how they choose who to federate with today, and Mastodon has their Server Covenant too. Great policies to be inspired by!)
3. Let us know if we can help. Shameless plug, but if you read this you probably know that I lead Fast Forward, Fastly’s open source support program. Fastly is built to handle the traffic surges that come with scale! And we’re already helping some of the Fediverse’s largest instances.

Just some quick thoughts from me to close out a stressful, busy week! Get some rest this weekend, remember to drink water, and be excellent to each other. :)