Yes. My personal guess is that they want to start Threads as just another Federation instance where people build communities and relationships across instances as they do already, and act like a good Fediverse instance, all friendly and open and free . . . and then once there's enough popularity and/or cross-traffic they will wall off the Threads portion and monetize access, so you're forced to either pay up to continue in the parts you like and are invested in, or walk away leaving everything you put into it to Meta and paying users.

Oh, and they'll suck up as much Fediverse data as they can too, while they're at it: anything they have access to will be hoovered up for their commercial use, just as it is now. Federating means that all federated traffic will be propagated to Meta servers in due course, and we all know Meta has zero intention of being bound by any agreements in regard to the data of others, regardless of what platitudes they mouth.

On a personal level, I don't give a shit whether lemmy.world federates with Threads, but only because I have already made the decision personally not to participate in ANYTHING Meta, and that includes here on the Fediverse.

I'm already here because Reddit pulled that same shit, and I walked away then too. I learned my lesson. No way will I knowingly cross that line into personally investing time and attention into what Meta could wall off at any time and monetize without recourse for anyone who does make that mistake.

And I'd rather they not have my data, but it's not like I'm in any position to stop or prevent it. Best I can do is stay away from all Meta products, apps, trackers, and cookies.

TL;DR: People can do what they want with Threads, federate or don't, participate or don't, just know that Meta can and will wall it off at any time and expect participants to pay in some way to continue.

Sure does seem that way.

I get that you, like me, don't like capitalist companies but what you're saying is based on nothing.

They can't steal content from here that's literally not possible, this comment here I'm writing now can not be stolen by anyone ever - and not just in the piracy isn't stealing way but in the it's public domain so you already all own it too.

I use stuff from meta all the time and I didn't steal it, all the vital open source code they've created and which is a fundermental part of stable diffusion and other open source tools is benefiting the community - are they only doing this to kill something?

I understand the logic that successful capitalist company must be evil because that's how capitalism works but it's also a lot more complex, open source isn't just a wishywashy dream for cheapskate nerds like meit's a powerful and positive force that can benefit everyone even companies like meta without them needing to kill anyone or anything. Participation isn't just it's own moral reward it's actually got a lot of other benefits too.

Meta might just want to federate because open source is good.