a) you don't give a damn about openness or tech or any of that but just want something that works

b) your first priorities are "where the people are" and "it works" but federated and open protocols are a big bonus

c) you absolutely want to go somewhere more open instead of another centralized service

Group A is big, and generally folks not on HN. HN itself splits between groups B and C.

If you think group B is a fair bit bigger than group C, but want the open stuff to thrive in the long term, then an initially-"friendly" Meta controlled app can harm you by attracting a big part of the people in group B and then slowly degrading the experience for folks using open clients over time until finally cutting it off. Most of group B won't migrate again at that point as long as they don't fuck up the experience completely.

Whereas if the Meta version wasn't "friendly" at first, much more of that group B might move straight to open things, and then stay there, creating a larger long-term userbase.

It's a way to keep people from fully jumping ship to open solutions by offering short-term openness that will dwindle over time.

If there are more Threads users than non-Threads users then non-Threads instance admins have to choose between adapt or risk emigration. EEE is a consolidation tactic after all.

Most ActivityPub services have taken ages to get decent apps and even now Mastodon has some obvious problems. Opening someone else's profile if nobody on your server follows them shows you a barren timeline with no history and there's still no way to tell Mastodon "go fetch toots from this user's outbox".

Money is power.