I’m happy to see Threads starting to federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub networks!
Open standards are good, and honestly, I have a *ton* of friends already on Instagram and Threads that would never join *yet another social network*, but I’d still love to keep up with them and their lives without having to use Threads. Federating via ActivityPub enables exactly that.
IMHO defederating from Threads is like an upstart email service blocking their users from being able to email Gmail users because they don’t like Google. That might seem fine on principle, but in reality it just siloes people from their friends—and makes joining the other service more attractive. 🤷♂️
If we want people to use and discover the goodness of Mastodon, we should federate, *and then* let ’em know how much nicer it is over on this side—all while being happy we can interact w/our friends.
Not dead against it, but I suspect the fear might be the other way around, big entity comes in and throws its weight around, to the detriment of all others, ultimately poisoning the ecosystem in the long term.
Since you mention Gmail, look what's happened to the so called federated email ecosystem. It's practically a duopoly at this point and getting off a Google/MS blacklist can be a nightmare for other mail hosters. The big guys call the shots, same as it ever was.
That is certainly good news! I do too and it's been ok for me personally. But I've also seen first hand the poor experience for smaller providers and end-users when the big providers arbitrarily block them. The users often just give up and move to the big providers, entrenching them further and degrading the overall ecosystem.
Does that warrant a pre-emptive strike? Hmm I don't know. But I've seen this movie a few times and for some reason the ending never changes.
Cassidy James 
Metal.Smurf