That doesn't actually fix the issue. If Facebook is trying to set itself up like Chrome with the webplatform, or GTalk with XMPP, then they will drive the feature set of ActivityPub, whether you're federated with them or not.
Hypothetical example:
Want to see this picture/video from someone on Threads? You need Facebook's proprietary picture format, which has DRM baked in it. Even if you don't federate, Mastodon, Lemmy, etc now have to take energy away from their work to adopt the proprietary picture format. It depends on the proportion Threads takes on the network and how they can leverage that position to put pressure.
Threads currently has voice notes. Should all ActivityPub services support that? If so, do we adhere to Threads' standard or not?
I'm all for companies participating in open source communities... but this is the company that routinely blocks me from viewing my aunt's reposts of Russian state sponsored racist propeganda just because I don't install the incredibly invasive mobile app.
I can imagine a few ways that this could go wrong...
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but Threads, as a federated web app, can get posts from other federated web app instances, and can store them indefinitely, right? Is this going to be a data-collection nightmare?
And it's how federation is supposed to work. Either you want to send your content to other instances or you don't. But federation is the wrong tool if you want to stay alone. You can defederate and block them if you don't like their terms.
I'm very curious how this will all shake out. I can understand all of you who want to block Threads and the only two instances that I am on myself are going to do exactly that, but it seems tremendously likely that the flagship instance of the fediverse, mastodon.social, will federate and it will have a massive impact on not just the culture, but also on the codebase. For example I wonder what services will go for feature parity and add features like voice notes which Threads added recently. Oh and culture-wise, with POTUS joining Threads, big institutions like the White House will suddenly appear on the fediverse.
Still holding out hope that a bunch of new users and new ideas will rejuvenate the fediverse, in any case 2024 should be a big year for it.
I look forward to the additional people Threads could bring here. Once the conversations are both directions I think many people will migrate to this side to avoid ads and Meta.