I’ve always thought of the StackExchange network as kind of a strange beast. In one sense, it is basically a Reddit clone. It has a “front page”, it has “karma”, it has “subreddits”, etc. And yet, it is something else entirely. Through strict moderation and constraining site rules, it has always maintained a separate niche from Reddit, despite being so conceptually similar.
I think there is a real possibility that StackExchange network is basically already compliant with the “threadiverse” protocol (ie the Lemmy/Kbin dialect of activitypub), or rather that the data model of their API could be made to be compliant with almost no effort at all. I think it would be really cool to see some of the questions and discussion threads that get created over there appearing over here. Even if it was a one-way connection, the idea of knitting these networks together is fascinating to me. I have no idea if it would make business sense for them, but then again I don’t actually know how StackExchange makes most of their money.
Being shunned from the Fediverse for being a corporate (evil or not) company is an inherently bad way to think about the Fediverse.
The beauty of the Fediverse is that it’s open to everyone and free (minus hosting prices/your data) to join, if we suddenly say we’re banning every corporation, then we’re a bit of a joke of a platform as that’s the exact opposite intention. While defederation exists it’s a joke to assume every huge instance will decouple from every major corporation.
Yes it is not optimal that an application such as Threads can adopt the protocol, but generally unless they destroy the protocol itself (highly unlikely) it’ll only affect competitors in direct competition like Mastadon. Even whilst being affected the main user base should remain as it’s currently made up of like minded individuals who despise corporations, respect our data privacy etc
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