They will still be able to access all your content though (and make money with it)

The concern is that the fediverse as it exists now may not be big enough to survive corporations entering it. If they start creating their own modified versions of that open protocol (which they will) it will eventually mean they start breaking compatibilty with the rest of the fediverse. That means that the rest of the fediverse will then need to move over to their protocol which they have control over or just accept that the free and open fediverse can no longer connect to the corporate fediverse. Right now the free and open fediverse is small and may not have the staying power to survive that disconnect once people get used to being connected to the corporate side of fediverse. Once that disconnect happens the average joe is going to go with the side that has more content which is going to be the corporate fediverse if they are alowed to join before the free and open fediverse has truely gotten off the ground.

Meta has also never been anything other than actively malicious when it comes to online communities. Giving them any power at all in the still infant fediverse brings more risk than any possible reward. It’s like letting a hyena into a daycare and saying it’s fine because the hyena isn’t hungry right now. Eventually it will be and why would you even let it in in the first place. Eventually meta will want more control. Letting them in now and allowing them to cement their place in the fediverse will just make it that much easier to extend and extinguish when that time comes.

It was always open to people, never to corporations. There’s a big difference between the two.

It was inevitable that there would be corporate interest especially as we pose an alternative and potential threat to their market share but never that people on the Fediverse, many of whom came here to escape the spam, hate, and corporate control of places like Facebook would embrace this. Nobody is shocked by this.

The admins of the Mastodon instance I’ve been on, Kolektiva, already announced they won’t be federating with “Threads” as it was Zuckerberg’s censorship that lead them to create their instance as an alternative. Many others are doing the same as they did when Trump created his instance that ended up in a closed loop. Those type of controls built into most parts of the Fediverse are certainly a strength. It’s not simply about living in “bliss” but about protecting what’s been built largely by volunteers over years. Data gathering would definitely be a threat if Meta was allowed in.

The history of corporate involvement in open-sourced space has been antagonistic and threatening. People have reason not to trust Meta and many have joined here long ago to get away from it so these these are valid concerns being articulated by much of the Fediverse and it’ll be interesting to see what comes next to say the least.