There’s a huge difference between expanding the Fediverse and allowing it to grow organically vs allowing communication with an entity as large and insidious as Meta, which Eugen doesn’t seem to get.

There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.

This is the most ridiculous part to me. If Meta get to the point of locking people out and created a walled-garden separate from the Fedi, it’s because they accomplished their goal of taking users and content away. And until they reach that goal, the Fediverse would be harmed by the outpouring of shit, spam, corporate product placement, ✨influencers✨ etc. that plague mainstream social media. Also XMPP was disallowed growth because of Google abandoning it, and that would happen here as well.

I just hope that most instances out of principal block them, but it isn’t looking so great.