Anika Begay
Flipboard is making good on a major promise from the fediverse. Late last year, around the same time it announced it was moving user accounts to ActivityPub, Flipboard said it planned to let users follow users on federated platforms who were using ActivityPub from the Flipboard app. As of Tuesday, that feature is live, meaning you can follow people from places like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed right inside Flipboard.
Flipboard will feature fediverse profiles in a variety of ways across the app. Flipboard 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 Hem Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel’s Threads account and Mike Masnick’s Mastodon account, which you can follow with a tap.
While you will be able to see posts from federated accounts on other platforms, you will not 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 enabled this option for some accounts so far, and if yours isn’t federated yet, you’ll be able to request it, says Flipboard’s Marci McCue The limit.
However, Flipboard’s fediverse expansion could make the app a one-stop shop for your news. AND social media posts from the people you care about the most. I’m intrigued by the idea; I usually keep my article feeds and my social feeds in separate apps, but I can see how combining the two might be useful.
Flipboard has been an outspoken advocate of federation. The company created its Mastodon instance (Flipboard.social) in 2023, and CEO Mike McCue has written and spoken about how important federation is to him. But thanks to things like this Flipboard update and the newly added ability in Threads to see replies to your federated posts, the great promise of federated social networking is becoming more and more a reality.
