I wonder if all of this hoopla over Meta joining the Fediverse is even justified. If Meta wanted to suck up all of that data right now, they could do that without creating an entire social network to do so, by literally grabbing it from the source, where it is publicly available, and they can do this with basically no fear of ever getting called on it. By merely federating with and supporting ActivityPub, all they do is make it reciprocal, and opt-in, at least from our PoV.
The real risk here in my opinion is the influence that Threads could have over the Fediverse indirectly. What if they become an integral part of it and threaten to leave, or just leave? What if they become the defacto censor of what instances you can federate with, by virtue of cutting off anyone that doesn't defederate certain instances? Etc, etc.
The privacy concerns, while they hold some validity, are a little bit moot for people who weren't going to consider using Threads in the first place. Google hoovers up all of this data already if only indirectly, and nobody seems to bat an eye.
The real risk here in my opinion is the influence that Threads could have over the Fediverse indirectly. What if they become an integral part of it and threaten to leave, or just leave? What if they become the defacto censor of what instances you can federate with, by virtue of cutting off anyone that doesn't defederate certain instances? Etc, etc.
The privacy concerns, while they hold some validity, are a little bit moot for people who weren't going to consider using Threads in the first place. Google hoovers up all of this data already if only indirectly, and nobody seems to bat an eye.