You say well we have to be pragmatic because threads/meta has so much more power than us that we will be able to reach so many more people with their help (or they could destroy us equally as powerfully)…. I say but wait a minute if they have all that power why is it shitty open source software projects with several orders of magnitude less funding than Meta are providing the vision of the future AND the technology to get us there? I mean sure if we just had the vision that might make sense but we already built the tools too…?

Honestly stop and think about why that is. Meta could have easily funded side projects and paid programmers to rewrite the code for the entire fediverse and all its associated softwares… many times over. Given the amount of money it has it could have done this over and over and over and over again and still be only spending a tiny fraction of its R&D budget. You have to convincingly explain to me why we were the ones who had to do it, through basically entirely volunteer work, and what makes you think engaging with them now AFTER we put in most of the groundwork to build the technology is a good idea.

You say we could get us so much growth, but every single damn person they bring us will still be the product for their true customers (advertisers etc) and from those people’s perspectives nothing meaningful will have changed. The relationship between meta and its users will be essentially the same, meta has to ensure this to protect their bottom line. So people will have joined the fediverse without actually joining it, who cares at that point?

There are a million ways meta can extend and embrace the fediverse, we need to prepare for the extinguish.