this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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I don't think so. The most probable result is Meta (and maybe Google, Amazon, etc) running the mainstream instances, and sn alt-fediverse of smaller, tech-savy instances that defederate them. Most people will have only an account in the Meta-fediverse, and only a minority in the alt-fediverse or in both. Similar to most people now having a WhatsApp account, and only a few using Telegram or Signal.
The largest instances have either already announced their intent to block Facebook or stated that they are monitoring the situation and will react quickly and decisively should anything untoward happen. There is no Fediverse without federated third parties. All Facebook could show in that case was... Literally their own walled garden. How is that different to them not even implenting activitypub in the first place? It isn't. Their only power is to ask if they can participate. Literally no one is going to waste a minute on any efforts of theirs that could even remotely be perceived as taking control.
Do you think that Facebook is going to have only one instance? What I expect is that they will have a "main" instance for regular users, and then they will offer instance-as-a-service (infrastructure, hosting, customization and even admins) for corporations: a Boston Celtics instance, a McDonald's instance, etc., all federated with the main Facebook instance. I guess you can describe them as a walled garden, but once the Facebook-verse becomes mainstream, it will be a much larger garden that the few of us who decide to defederate them.
And then there is the issue of Chromium-ification. Once Facebook reaches a dominant position in (their walled garden portion of) the fediverse, they will implement their own features on top of ActivityPub, leaving us with an inferior version.