I cam here to get away from all the corporate BS, but suddenly people want to welcome Facebook/Meta to the fediverse? I cannot fathom how people see their intentions as pure or innocent, especially since they aim to profit off of the open source software everyone has worked so hard on.
I just don’t see how the fediverse survives if it decides to let these massive companies make their instances. It feels like it’ll be a repeat of the rise of social media, where all the smaller forms got wiped out by large, consolidated social media platforms.
No one is against choice. If someone wants to go on Threads then they certainly are allowed to.
But Threads and what it stands for is the antithesis to everything ActivityPub and the fediverse stands for. Overwhelmingly large instances, even without Facebook association are already a problem through too much consolidation of power. Social networks are only valuable if they actually connect people, and link aggregators in particular do actually depend on there being a decent amount of users and activity. If too much is on one instance, and that instance decides to defederate with smaller instances, those smaller instance may very likely be killed through that due to lack of content.
This would instantly happen through the 100 times as large instance that Threads would be. Your argument of choice is non applicable imo, because as you say, if someone wants Lemmy they can go to Lemmy, if someone wants Threads they can go to Threads. The two do not need to be federated for there to be the choice you mention.
When is a large instance too large?
The bigger threat to ActivityPub right now is the admin’s credit card or legal liability due to hosted content. The most successful open source projects either become or attract commercial projects. IMO, the hobbiest operators will be the downfall of ActivityPub. The hobbiest operators are subject to life happening. I would love to see the number of Fediverse instances that have blinked in and out of existence.