And when they reach park ripeness, put them in the fridge and they stay good for a few days.

This has strong NotTheOnion vibes.

No, because when (not if) Threads goes downhill they will have become the dominant platform with all the users and special communities (just like Reddit was and still is). I want Lemmy to become that platform, not Threads. The whole idea is not to be beholden to yet another corporate techbro overlord.

Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

First they will add loads of new users and become the dominant instances. Then, they will add their own proprietary features that other instances cannot support. Finally, their extensions become the new de-facto standard, marginalizing the original implementations.

Since Meta has proven itself to be an evil company that does not act in good faith, it is better to not federate with them from the start.