Everyone is talking about how Meta is trying to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish the Fediverse. Meta won’t be alone for long in this goal, there will be a lot of capitalist actors that would try to do the same in the long run.
Defederation with them will be a shot in the leg, and handicap the Fediverse movement itself. There will be users/instances in the current Fediverse that would want to federate with them, and banning such instances would create silos and echo chambers.
The way out of this is to focus on the 2nd E - “Extend”. I think we can all agree that UX of Threads app will always probably be the best out of all the federated instances. But that is something that people can still live without. Before long, Meta will tout shortcomings like lack of E2E encryption in the private messages and some other core features, that will create a bigger divide amongst ourselves. The Fediverse developers and community have to keep abreast of Meta on such core features, so that they can never extend the core of the Fediverse.
Let me know of your thoughts!
What need is there to Federate with Meta? They’re a corporation where growth matters. Lemmy and Mastodon are private, networked instances where funding can and often does come from donations. Provided instance operators can subsist off those donations, the need to grow for the sake of growth/profit is a non-issue.