and if we really want to keep growing then we can do so without Meta.
No we cannot. This website is barely usable. The average person doesn’t want to use lemmy. They want to hear what their favorite musicians and athletes are up to. They want to use a service that has a massive user base so they can learn new things from experts in various niche fields, etc. They don’t want to go to a website with 1000 people who all share the same unpopular political views.
By joining with threads, we make it easier for this average person to switch over to lemmy or mastadon. There is literally no downside to federating with them. They can’t shut down smaller instances.
The real problem was always a lack of alternatives imo. A “protest” can’t work on the website you’re literally using. What should have happened is those people all moved to another platform, but there isn’t one. There isn’t one canonical alternative to reddit, so they had to “protest” there.