Really does make the case for a federated protocol of some sort.

Well, Threads is at least aiming to do that and integrate with Mastodon, but the group mind has decided that this is bad.

Mastodon will never take off.

Why though? I'll never understand this. Wasn't Instagram already doing the same thing?

Maybe I'm too old. Get off my lawn!

https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse has some stats, but take them with a grain of salt. It's slowly growing overall, but certain subjects are more active than others.

I still haven't seen any actual evidence of this, but I'm excited to see yours, which you clearly have given how confidently you're asserting this.

I think you're right; it will probably never have particularly wide reach, but it will (and to some extent does have) deep appeal.

What I mean is that people who are attracted to a platform like Lemmy are the kind of people who are likelier to have those niche passions and knowledge on those topics. And they are the kind of people who are also likelier to participate in communities around those things. No, not everyone, and yes there are still communities with a broader appeal and less depth, but I think my point is clear enough. It's just kind of intrinsic to how the platform works and how it is positioned in the broader internet space.

They can scrape it now. Everything is publically available. But this data is not that valuable for them compareted to someone installing Threads, Instagram or Facebook app that has pretty much full access to your phone all it's activities and information.

The bigger issue is that when they join ActivityPub, they will take advantage of existing content we generated and add their ads on that content for Threads users.