tbf, Israel releasing mammoth numbers of their prisoners for small numbers of their own citizens is pretty standard, and would probably be assumed by anyone well familiar with the history of the conflict.

I have to regretfully agree. I find this continuing assertion that defederating Meta properties will somehow dramatically harm the Fediverse to be unfounded. I have not yet encountered any convincing argument for how defederating Threads is any kind of suicide whatsoever. We have no Threads now, and seem to be doing quite well.

Is Beehaw still doing fine, yes? They defederated rather harshly, in a far more delicate time than now.

We will never be able to compete with them for as long as they remain federated with us. We will simply have no unique value any longer. All of our development–open source. All of our content–available to the federation. He will have rightful possession of it all, everything we are.

However, he does not have to share his development with us. He does not have to share his hardware resources with us. He does not have to limit himself to only the capabilities that we want to be added.

He can, if absolutely necessary, buy us. One big Instance at a time.

Our only path forward with any independence is to defederate immediately and ruthlessly. This way, we keep our content. We keep that unique contribution, that we can use as a competitor to eventually demonstrate our value to the rest of the world. That’s the only way possible for us to have any chance of eventually toppling him, instead. We must retain our unique value. We must protect our content. If he wants it, make him scrape it and repost it with bots or something.