Do you think Meta's Threads app will be beneficial or detrimental to the Fediverse?
Personally I believe that it'll make people associate the Fediverse with Threads, which is not a good thing. Edit: It'll replace their definition of the Fediverse, with Threads, and people may widely forget about Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin etc.
Considering that the big majority of Threads' users are cringe influencers, brands that are ads themselves, and celebrities who don't want to interact with anybody but their bootlickers (who are also celebrities), I would say it's detrimental to the fediverse.
You're judging the platform based on the earliest of early adopters. Yes, people with nothing to lose and everything to gain by being on the ground floor of the platform have joined, but general adoption will take a little while. It will grow and normalize. They do have an uphill battle convincing people to leave Twitter, and frankly, ActivityPub isn't a big selling point. Being able to talk to nerds who left Twitter and Reddit isn't going to drive the average Instagram user or current average Twitter user to a platform - or else they'd be here. Yes, that's the side many of us know, but we are not average users.
Judging a platform by its users or vis versa is really shitty unless it's something truly extreme like Nazi's. "Do we really want normies who mostly follow celebrities and l brands?" Yes, we do. I'd love to follow Matt Mercer and Wizards of the Coast on here. I'd love to follow my favorite youtubers and politicians and game studios. That probably sounds pretty palatable to many users here, but if my mom follows movie stars, TV networks, and crafting influences because those are her interests, how is that any less legitimate? And is it wrong for me to want the accounts she's interested in to join the fediverse so we can have a common platform to share things with eachother?
If you want what facebook has, just use facebook. No snark intended. Anyhow, in my view the fedipact gets us all what we want anyhow.
With the fedipact in mind, we end up with a big chunk of fediverse who are at a minimum like minded enough that they recognize and reject the influence of Meta and others like them, and another big chunk of fediverse where folks don't really mind everything that sort of influence brings, and can wallow in it all they like.