Doesn’t authenticated fetch kinda fix that? If users have the option to make their account private except to logged in other users, and if the server enables authenticated fetch to reject access from blocked / de-federated servers, then only logged in users from servers the server grants access to federate with will be able to view the content. That seems like some useful measure of privacy at least.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I just think that the solution is to cultivate the content here. Not connect with the same old corporate platforms that caused the problems in the first place.
My own hypothesis is that it’s not as much about EEE in the way that people understand it, or about stealing the small amount of users on the fediverse, but more about hedging against the possibility that the fediverse gains significant mainstream appeal. By having one foot in the fediverse they can better capture the fedi-curious. I don’t think the fediverse is currently a threat, but the possibility that it could be I think is what they care about. And spinning up Threads is a cheap (for them) way to address that.
It uses the zip archive feature that they allow you to request and export so at least it doesn’t use a direct connection or API. I think there is also some EU rule or something about requiring it because Dansup was asking about filing a complaint because of the export format being convoluted or something, not sure of the details but hopefully that means there’s some legal weight to the export feature sticking around.
The only realistic thing that the NDA could have contained was stipulations around leaking details about Threads. Who cares. Some admins probably wanted an inside look so they agreed to not leak any details. That does nothing to put their instances under the control of Meta. Yeah sure the admins are “controlled by the contract”… to not share any secrets about Threads. Again who cares.
People dreaming up scenarios about the NDAs including clauses that let Meta control instances or their admins are delusional. As someone working in tech I sign NDAs all the time when I visit my friend’s companies. It doesn’t mean they have any control over me besides stopping me from leaking stuff that I see inside the company.