Microsoft literally invented the term, but even they’ve abandoned the philosophy and pivoted to contributing to the development of open source software. Who’s to say “Meta” won’t be making contributions to the development of ActivityPub itself like Microsoft does with Chromium? I won’t be signing up for Threads since I already have Mastodon, but I’m also unconcerned with it joining the wider fediverse and look forward to following the people who do use it from my Mastodon account.
Microsoft changed and so could Meta. They’re out to make money not just to be evil so if they think this will make them money they would do it.
Meta makes a lot of contributions to open source. Jest and pytorch are two tools they have made open source. They have their eyes on killing Twitter and connecting to one of the biggest alternatives is a smart move, but eventually if all goes well they won’t need mastadon anymore. That’s the concern I think. Once threads is big enough they will quietly remove activitypub support and screw up mastadon in the process.
