Until they take over and force a change that renders things back centralized into their hands.
That makes zero sense, that’s not how the fediverse works. Explain how they would take over completely independent and unconnected instances that are defederated from them.
By having “the masses”, they can simply force things by not federating themselves. Email was already brought up and still federates but xmpp is a prime example where Facebook and google acquired a bunch of users and then walled off their access to federation. It all but killed xmpp as a tool in regular use outside of technically inclined circles.
Meta already has the masses right now and is currently defederated from us as we speak, them making an instance and not federating would change literally nothing for us from our current structure.
Besides, it would be a benefit if they defederated themselves voluntarily. They’ve already shown their moderation to be shit and no telling what they’ll try to do with our data, I wouldn’t want to be on any instance that federates with the Meta instance(s).
Implement new features that only work when you integrate with Meta, then cut them out of the picture if they don’t do what Meta says. The majority of users will stick with the instances that have the stickers and emojis that their friends have. Similar to what Google is doing with it’s browser and the Internet.
See also: Google with Gmail.
Good luck running your own mail server these days, and getting your messages actually delivered to Gmail and Outlook/O365 mailboxes. It’s possible, but a hassle, and the rug can get pulled at any moment.
So we’d have the exact structure we have now. A centralized platform, or instance, for the people that don’t care and our current federated instances for the people that do care.
This is all a big nothing burger. We’ll just continue to not use meta instances and platforms like we’re literally doing right now.
