I don’t understand what Meta will gain from participating in the fediverse? Their ultimate goal is to make money of Threads and I just don’t see how encouraging an open federation will help them do it? Even 3Eing the fediverse will not do them much good as they already have sooo much traffic already that killing the fediverse will not make a serious change in their figures. But OTOH it does seem like Threads is net positive for the fediverse ATM. Even if all current denizens of the fediverse will block Threads, there is a large group of people that are exposed to the concept of “fediverse” for the fist time and some of them will want to learn more. This is a good thing. Anyway, I don’t know why they are doing it, but I’m cautiously glad they did it. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
My own hypothesis is that it’s not as much about EEE in the way that people understand it, or about stealing the small amount of users on the fediverse, but more about hedging against the possibility that the fediverse gains significant mainstream appeal. By having one foot in the fediverse they can better capture the fedi-curious. I don’t think the fediverse is currently a threat, but the possibility that it could be I think is what they care about. And spinning up Threads is a cheap (for them) way to address that.
Yes, people are panicking because Meta is coming for us. They’re taking two opportunities with one strike:
At the end of the day, more people in the fediverse is a win in my book. And if it becomes a problem there’s always defederation as a last resort.