This is actually why I’m excited for ActivityPub in Threads. I’m hoping that it can function as a gateway drug to the Fediverse.

“Like Threads? Then continue to follow all your friends there while moving to an ad-free Mastodon client!”

I love the idea of this, but the only reason I check Instagram is to see what my friends are posting, which I couldn’t do on an alternative, sadly.

they have full control over the app

Yup, this is also my problem with Signal; you’re stuck with whatever boneheaded decisions the devs make and there’s nothing you can do about it. Personally, my pet peeve is their refusal to add any kind of data export. As someone who likes backing up chat history, this is a dealbreaker for me.

A more likely outcome is Big Tech coming in and fragmenting and dissolving ActivityPub servers like all the Lemmy servers.

How? If, say, Facebook built a Lemmy-compatible instance, the worst they could do is eventually defederate it from other Lemmy instances, in which case we’re right back where we started.

Yup, and this is a good thing IMO. Ad supported instances, subscription based instances, and donation based ones all can coexist, and users can pick whichever they prefer.

Much better than the alternative of “you get stuck with whatever the current CEO thinks is the best strategy”.

I think the problem is that you have to have at least some understanding of how the federation aspect functions to make sense of Lemmy. I’d love to contribute to their UX, there’s a lot of room for improvement IMO.

Same problem as with any social network migration: the network effect.

Sometimes the largest equivalent Lemmy community for a subreddit is tiny, or worse, nonexistent. Sure, you can go create one, but unless you can also convince other people to join with you, it won’t be much fun.