I had a scary thought: what if youtube decided to join the fediverse?
When I saw MKBHD on threads available through flipboard, the thought crossed my mind. Wouldn't it be a game changer for the biggest websites to suddenly try to coax users and content creators with "one account to rule them all" solution?
I don't see how they could harm the fediverse as is. I don't see how embrace extend extinguish could work, as if they extinguish, then the fediverse would just return to how it is now. There's no way that people currently on Mastodon would decide to move to threads, as most are on there because they don't trust big social media companies
That's not the danger, the danger is there being even less incentive to move to opensource alternatives. If you can have one account on e.g youtube with which you can talk to people on threads, send pictures to insta, and receive comments from everywhere, why move?
For the same reason that people use newpipe or invidious instead of the youtube app or website: a better experience. The kind of people who use the official client aren't going to be moving to be fediverse anyway!