Theory: the only reason Meta cares about the fediverse / ActivityPub is so that threads isn't labeled a "gatekeeper" under the EU's new "Digital Markets Act"
Links to source articles below.
Yesterday 30 million users signed up for threads, which is already more than active users in the fediverse.
Furthermore, it seems that Meta hasn't launched threads in the EU due to uncertainty regarding the Digital Markets Act. It is entirely possible that their intent to federate with other Activitypub instances is entirely a cheap way to avoid being labeled a gatekeeper and avoid other regulatory requirements or restrictions.
It's future use of ActivityPub to get better publicity or scrape a bit more data might be an added benefit but not it's true purpose.
We'll see if launch in the EU goes hand in hand with them turning on Federation. I suspect that ActivityPub and the Fediverse are merely an afterthought to them and a convenient way to avoid being impacted by certain regulations.
Edit: Found a brief overview of the DMA. Among other things they say:
"The DMA aims to ensure the interoperability of messaging services allowing users on services like WhatsApp to send messages to users on smaller services like Signal"
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_6423
If as much as 10% of Instagram signs up for threads they'd be as big as twitter. Threads could gobble up a lot of the incoming population of the fediverse and once they have enough people, defederate from everyone else, limiting the available content to non-corpo instances. Defederating from threads is of paramount importance for the well being of the fediverse.
They don't need to defederate. Just extend with Theads-only features to force others to funnel into their platform or else miss content. Slowly ramp it up until the competition mostly dies out on its own.
Exactly, due to metas nearly unlimited funding they can afford extra server strain for exclusive features that you'll miss out unless you're on threads
I don't know if I'd feel like I'd be missing out on anything personally, I don’t have any interest in what people from Facebook or Instagram have to say as I feel like it's going to be pretty watered down interactions with little thought behind it.
If they remove themselves from the fediverse equation after amassing a following, I would hope we would be left with what we just have here at the moment, which I'm quite happy with.
that's not what zuck wants to do with threads tho
And open them up to anti-conpetitive and monopoly law suits? Meta has already been getting calls to be broken up for having the top two social medias, if they get the full trifecta then they're gonna have a tough time selling defederation to the FTC or E.U. Better for them to take 90% of the pie and allow others to fight over the scraps then try for full 100% and risk litigation.