A wild polar bear might not bite me if I pat it either.

Personally it doesn’t seem preemptive to me because I think the part where Meta held secret meetings with certain Fediverse admins and made them sign NDAs was a clear indication of the way they are going to do things, i.e nontransparent and not as equals.

Perfect conditions for embrace extend extinguish, which is boiling a frog so could do a lot of damage before most people are able to spot it.

I accept that YMMV though, I just don’t think it’s particularly closed-minded of those of us who are too wary of their motives to want to federate with them.