Meta should be considered "harmful to humankind" (the list of atrocities is long) and I personally really don't want anything to do with them.

It was only matter of time before one of the big players took interest. Too bad it had to be Meta, but I don't think the others would have been much better.

The protocol itself isn't secure, so if anyone is worried about data harvesting, better log off now and never return. Meta and anyone else can do that already (and is probably doing) without having to roll in with their own instances.

Federating with someone who might have 1.2 billion MAUs is kinda scary because most protocol implementations (like Mastodon) are huge mess of bloat and inefficiencies under the hood. Someone paying their hosting out of their own pocket or trusting on kindness of strangers should be wary of the amount of data that's going to hit them with federation.

It's probably silly to expect "unified blocklist". Some people are fixated with the idea of growth and equate mass popularity with success. Others would rather "wait and see". Let them. The fediverse used to be much more homogeneous place 3-4 years ago, but we're nearing 10M users. That's simply too many people and voices for there to be just one response.

Luckily there doesn't need to be. The protocol allows for creation of spaces that don't have to interact with Meta.