A lot of people in the #Fediverse are saying that Threads joining is a form of "Embrace, extend, extinguish" and IMO I don't think that's the case.
There's no need for Meta to kill this network or absorb it.
ActivityPub by design favors big servers like Meta's, it also not being nomadic (like BlueSky cough) means that users can't easily jump ship from a server they don't like.
I already see the #FediPact posts discussing leaving notable servers like Mastodon.social and it's silly IMO.
By design this whole network was built on shaky ground and when discussion of any Bluesky style improvements came up most users flipped out.
We'll be here again and again until those improvements come, if they ever come.
Reality is Meta knows they're king already and they don't need the regular users on the Fediverse.
IMO they want the WordPress profiles.
They want the illusion of freedom for celebrities and corporations.
An "open" data format they can use to get sites to integrate with their servers without signing up for an OAuth token or anything like that.
Facebook Connect used to be a big deal.
Major sites once let you comment on articles via Facebook only.
ActivityPub will let them pull that off again without the backlash of the past (no more "walled gardens").
I've already seen a few blogs that accept ActivityPub replies as comments.
Threads offering 130 million monthly active users puts Meta at the #1 spot for those comment sections now.
They could effectively ignore Mastodon, Friendica and the others and dominate by helping ActivityPub go more mainstream without making any changes or extensions to the spec.
Think about it, if ActivityPub becomes the HTML of the social web like the Mastodon community and #Fediverse as a whole dreamed of, Threads wins.
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