Agreed, to an extent. But falling into the siren song of “the goal is federation no matter what” will inevitably lead us down the road traveled many times before. The problem comes when Meta starts tweaking and exploiting. If our implementations change to maintain adequate federation with Meta—well, it is only a matter of time at that point.

I again point to RCS. That was tiny. Google still bothered, and now the only real implementation is their own because anyone with a say simply went along with it (whether directly, or via passivity).

On the other hand, we are significant enough to warrant pandering and supposed adoption. There’s no reason for Threads to use (eventually) ActivityPub.

Some have theorized that Meta glommed onto it in order to skirt EU regulations regarding gatekeepers. That could be another angle.

But I’m truly worried that, as decentralized communities and ultimately disorganized projects, one big player will swing through and take it all away in one way or another. It’s happened before.