while it will draw more users into the fediverse, nearly all of them will join directly with threads
users who would have joined other instances will be parasited to threads as the safest best supported option
whatever threads does, other instances will be forced to copy or risk losing feature parity with the most important player in the space.
existing users will get accustomed to the content from threads as occupying the dominant super majority of content on the site.
Threads will essentially be the space, with all currently existing communities left as periphery. Which is very bad on it’s own because the decentralized space is no longer decentralized, and in fact is in the hands of Meta.
Meta will eventually wall itself off because not having control of your users social graph is an unnecessary threat. And since they are the space, so they will lose very little by walling off. When they do wall off, the fediverse will have it’s communities deeply intermingled with Meta, and when people lose most of their friends and content to meta walling themselves off - most are going to choose to relocate to meta.
Slowly growing the decentralized space organically is important to avoid this kind of stuff. If we allow someone to become the hyper-dominant instance, the principle of de-federation ceases to matter because they have so much controlling leverage over the users.I do still think this is a good thing, but it’s a complicated good thing that could do more damage. I am very worried that they aren’t starting off federated. That also means their internal community norms will develop isolated from what fediverse has tried to establish.