I don’t think the people who are genuinely psyched about Threads on fedi are monsters or fascists, and I don’t think those kinds of characterizations—which show up a lot in my replies—are helping. And I understand that our theories of change just don’t overlap as much as I’d initially hoped.

And here’s me, who frankly couldn’t give two shits either way, and finds the excessive discussion quite absurd.

I mean, if the federated space stays small, no commercial company holds much value into integrating with it. Naturally. This is also why it’s so transparent that for Meta this is a way to pre-empty legislation and restrictions in the EU by being “open”™️ with Threads.

But on the other hand if it does take off, Meta is really going to be the least of the protocol’s problems. The sheer amount of commercial providers will be, including the very large like Meta, Microsoft and Google, up to thousands and millions of small providers that all build on purely commercial interests. Nevermind Apple’s obviously incompatible version they’ll make the only one you can install apps for on iOS.

Meta specifically? It’s an early warning shot, either about a future of obscurity, or of commercialization.