It only got that amount of users because every Instagram app user got a giant message to try Threads and their Instagram account also works as a Threads account. It would have been a very different story if it were built from the ground up with no cross-advertisement, account sharing and so on.

Proprietary social media platforms need to go away. The web was made for federated or decentralized content, based on open source technologies. E-Mail is like that. Web sites are like that. Lemmy and Mastodon are like that. That’s how you design it right from the ground up. It doesn’t at all make sense to have a global social network based upon closed source code and hosted by one company only. That’s not a free global social network, it’s a company social network. The users can’t control anything about it. No amount of users will ever change that the company can and will do what it wants with the whole network. So just stop using this stuff. It’s the same thing as with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on, just painted differently. It has the same inherent problems which can’t be solved due to its architecture and ownership. Just stop using it, help grow the good alternatives (Mastodon, Lemmy, …) and get others to use them. We have the right technology now, so just start using it. Don’t live in the past just because most still do.

Also, I think their implementation of ActivityPub is just an EEE (Embrace,Extend,Extinguish) strategy in the long term.