I think that ActivityPub’s path to success is to integrate multiple forms of media into a single, messy but interoperable platform. It’s like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and Blogspot in a single place, without needing to sacrifice your preferences. The success is not on specific actors like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon… or Threats Threads.

The article mentions Eugen’s post on Threads joining. I think Eugen underestimates the threats.

A shrinking network is considerably worse than a stagnant one; infrastructure costs take into account the former large size, people start relying on donations and tools that won’t be there any more, so goes on. And even the fact that users are leaving prompts other users to disengage, specially if they need to choose “should I spend my time interacting with people in Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin, or in Threads?”. So no, when Threads abandons ActivityPub down the line, Mastodon won’t be exactly where it is now, it’ll be in a far worse position.

For a simple analogy: Pre-Threads Fediverse will be like a 100k inhabitants city. Post-Threads Fediverse will be like a 1M city decimated back into 100k inhabitants.

I also think that Eugen puts too much weight on brand recognition. Specially as Mastodon is not as widely known as it should.