although this is unlikely to substantially and directly impact us and is a more immediate concern for Mastodon and similar fediverse software, we've signed the Anti-Meta Fedi Pact as a matter of principle. that pact pledges the following:
i am an instance admin/mod on the fediverse. by signing this pact, i hereby agree to block any instances owned by meta should they pop up on the fediverse. project92 is a real and serious threat to the health and longevity of fedi and must be fought back against at every possible opportunity
the maintainer of the site is currently a little busy and seems to manually add signatures so we may not appear on there for several days but here's a quick receipt that we did indeed sign it.
If there's no issues then we can refederate at any later time.
What is the harm in waiting?
Can't find the source, but I did see a rumor they'll be turning on federation a few months after the official release so as to not spring all of this place on a bunch of old people. So if they do that, they'll already have their own ecosystem/culture in place. I'm also a bit worried the extended introduction is going to lull people.
I think regardless, it always needs to be at the forefront of user's minds that they're not averse to playing it slow. Likely, they'll be on their best behavior starting out, especially since having a working platform at all means making as many friends in the fediverse as they can. They're not gonna come in swinging their junk around like spez.
Acting the gracious benefactor will not stop them from leaving this place a haunted backwater once they gather enough standing to start gradually poaching users via shiny toys and high engagement. Theirs is always going to be a numbers game.
This includes any new users too, and it's something that can be mitigated more than stopped. I don't see it as really a question that we stand to wither in the shadow of a recognizable name.
Any niceties will be presumed by me to be a fakeout, and I'm personally pissed off that what was supposed to be a way to worm out from under the corporations semi-permanently stands to be drowned out immediately by corporations.