I'm also optimistic that the people on the current #Threads team are showing up in the fediverse with good intent and genuinely want to make the integration work. However, #Meta as a company is going to pursue its own interests, and just as ruthlessly as any other company of their size. We all know AP has its shortcomings. Meta can add a lot of value (to users, to developers) by extending it -- and in fact they probably will have to, just to make things work at the scale they're likely to have and to avoid the kinds of user confusion we take for granted in today's fediverse ("oh yeah you don't see all the responses to a post, it depends on these incredibly complicated rules that different software sometimes implements differently"). So embrace-and-extend is a given, and if it's in Meta's business interests to follow that by exploiting the ecosystem, then of course they well ... and if it turns out that AP can't overcome its current limitations, then of course Meta will look for another solution.
Like I said at today's #FediForum session I think there are likely to be a lot of positives to Threads' arrival in the fediverse but anybody who kids themselves about who they're dealing with is setting themselves up for a very negative outcome as soon as they're not useful to Meta.
inquiline