Chozo

I could see it as being part of Meta's plan to make the Fediverse fracture itself to make it easier to manipulate.

Okay, but that's a disingenuous argument to be making. Yes, AP is designed with the options to block instances, but that's not the core function it's built around. That's a failsafe, not the selling feature that would make communities adopt it. Communities can already exist without federating with other platforms: by running their own, non-AP platform in the first place. The developers of AP didn't say "I want to make a protocol built around blocking connections".

Nobody buys a car for its brakes, but you still need to have them for safety purposes. Defederation is pumping said brakes. It's a necessary feature, but not the main point of the car.

Pretty sure they're on TikTok, and not Threads.

Right, but what this will end up doing is effectively creating two distinct Fediverses; one with Meta and all the users, and one that will sequester themselves off to an even smaller corner of the internet than before. That's not a healthy outcome. And if all the EEE(E?) rants and ravings people have been posting lately are to be believed, that'll only make these smaller communities even less able to resist Meta's influence.

What an absurd headline.

EDIT: And "AI" was only mentioned a single time in the article.

The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.”

The biggest names in tech reporting apparently showed up to the internet this week with some way to sneak the term "AI" into their headlines. Fuck you, Wes Davis.

Okay, but what sort of material would you expect to actually see on your timeline in this scenario?

OP's avatar is very fitting for this headline.

With ActivityPub, Meta is playing on our turf. They don't have home field advantage here. ActivityPub isn't a protocol that they control.

What sort of "Meta shit" would you possibly expect to appear on your timeline?

I'm not so sure that this sort of divisive policy is healthy for the Fediverse. ActivityPub is meant to connect communities, not split them apart. I feel like this is just going to cause even more fragmentation at a time when ActivityPub can really be showing off its capabilities.

I imagine this would dissuade further adoption by other communities.