Flipboard is making good on a major fediverse promise. Late last year, at the same time it announced it would be switching user accounts to ActivityPub, Flipboard said it planned to let users follow users on federated platforms that used ActivityPub from the Flipboard app. Starting Tuesday, that feature is here, meaning that you can follow people from places like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed right inside Flipboard.
Flipboard will feature fediverse profiles in a few different ways in the app. Flipboard’s search will show fediverse accounts, for example, while the Explore tab will have editorially curated recommendations, according to a press release. In a screenshot shared by Flipboard, the Explore section has a “Fediverse” tab that’s populated with profiles like Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel’s Threads account and Mike Masnick’s Mastodon account, and you can follow those accounts with a tap.
While you’ll be able to see posts from federated accounts on other platforms, you won’t be able to reply to or like those posts from Flipboard unless your Flipboard account is also federated, which may not be the case for everyone. Flipboard has only turned that on for some accounts so far, and if yours isn’t federated yet, you’ll be able to request for that to happen, Flipboard’s Marci McCue tells The Verge.
Still, Flipboard’s fediverse expansion could make the app a one-stop shop for your news and social media posts from the people you’re most interested in. I’m intrigued by the idea; I usually keep my article feeds and my social feeds in separate apps, but I can see how it could be useful to combine them both.
Flipboard has been a vocal supporter of federation. The company created its own Mastodon instance (Flipboard.social) in 2023, and CEO Mike McCue has written and talked about how big a deal he thinks federation is. But thanks to things like this Flipboard update and the newly added ability in Threads to see replies to your federated posts, the lofty promises of federated social networking are becoming more of a reality.