I see it a bit differently. For me, the point of activitypub is to decentralize. One of the wonderful things about activitypub and the fediverse is that while it supports universal federation, it also allows people to contemplate smaller, integrated communities. I never saw it as an “all or nothing” proposition; if a community like Beehaw wants to select their federation partners carefully, that’s absolutely okay.

If an instance decides that Meta, or Tumblr, or notareal.in.stance don’t fit their community vibe and they exclude them from federation, that’s… the fediverse working properly. Having the ability to interconnect is wonderful… but we should not expect that all instances will want to interconnect with everyone else.