And Twitter used to have free API access. And Facebook Messenger used to have Jabber compatibility. I don't think those companies deserve any trust in regards of promoting them for their open initiatives.

Threads' activity pub gimmick is just a nice to have. It's the salad of the Big Mac. If you're going to eat it anyway, sure, glad it is there, but it doesn't make it deserve a spot in any serious discussion about healthy food alternatives.

> it has Fediverse interop.

It has been completely abandoned AFAIK. As expected, the good ol' classic EEE attempt, but it just didn't work due to decentralized architecture and just lack of actual capability from Meta.

Aren't many big mastodon instances talking about blocking Threads?

I don't like the mastodon culture but tbh I can't fault them for this move. Imagine if every post on r/all suddenly shows up on HN.