What exactly does it do / which problem(s) does it solve? Its website reads kinda intentionally vague to me.

Regarding weather: I just love the no-frills at-a-glance presentation of the AF Weather Widget

Unless someone would stumble upon a combination of microwave magnetron that “just so happens” to fit a satellite dish LNC mount. I can neither confirm nor deny that such combinations might exist.

It certainly would seem a very good way to impart… “energy” into all and sundry besides the intended target, and as such horribly dangerous and irresponsible.

Could also be the exact opposite (experienced this with consumer grade electronics based on microcontrollers often enough):

Because of the large capacitors, voltage from the power brick kinda “ramps up” when it is plugged into the wall. The device/its MCU/most specifically its clock circuit however prefers a hard edge of power being turned on, to reliably trigger its power on reset circuit/oscillator.

You can think of it similar to a pendulum/newton’s cradle/metronome - they also prefer one decisive push to get going reliably.

Unplugging the brick for a longer time is still worth a try, but it could also be this.

The ruling has been updated to say that accepting cannot be more convenient/streamlined/less clicks than rejecting, though.

Getting that enforced is another matter altogether, however.

There’s CookieAutoDelete (or anonymous tabs, containers, …) for the other side of this issue.

As for the first points, yes, that may happen, but is it a problem for users who already are part of a ‘better’ experience here than on the for-profit platforms?

I, for one, find much better discourse here than anywhere on reddit, let alone Meta or Twitter.

Also exemplified by me engaging much more here than ever on the others. I do prefer quality over quantity - everyone is invited to join the table, but I don’t see much benefit in luring people there who would ultimately only dilute or be disruptive - ie, not really into the thing that’s happening here.

For the last point, well, legislators can certainly try. While telling people it’s all for their benefit and upholding freedom and democracy and equal opportunity and whatnot. And even keep a straight face.

But they happily give it to Threads, no…?

Yes, I know, I’m being somewhat more provocative here than necessary.

More down to reality, thousands of accounts being registered within seconds, possibly all from the same IP, aren’t ordinary user activity. And quite feasible to filter for.

Heck, you could even ask for the eMail and offer some “or, if you rather wouldn’t, you could…” thing that basically serves as a CAPTCHA.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t read into that referenced article by ninja at all, maybe it already says something related)

For one, it may be possible to filter accounts that were created but actually never used to log on, within a week or two of creation - those could go without much harm done IMO.

And/or, you could message such accounts and ask them for email verification, which would need to be completed before they can interact in any way (posting, commenting, voting). That latter one is quite probably currently not directly supported by the Lemmy software, but could be patched in when the need arises.

How would they ensure this latter thing?

In my current understanding, it’s readily possible today (on Lemmy and related software), what could Meta do to keep this from continuing to work?

From my (admittedly, deliberately naive and provocative) perspective, what is the (possible) “added value” of Threads’ ad-infested feed over the community experience straight on Lemmy?

Is it (more) about Meta themselves, or rather about individual users, though?

I “tried” to use XMPP/Jabber in its heyday, but in my experience (& memory) it never got to the point to have a “critical mass” of community (I felt to be part of / want to be part of).

Fediverse/Lemmy has this critical mass at least since some weeks now - unless too many of those users decide to leave for another place, I’m happy here no matter what other things get hyped in a given week.

Back in Jabber’s day, I would have liked to see it develop some communities as they did - and still do! - exist on IRC, but that simply never happened (with one I would both be interested in and could find).

It allows me to run any weird combination of applications I feel I need on a given day, (fairly) easily integrating basically all open source packages with a custom/local overlay and have those managed as part of the system just like everything else.

“Should ‘we’ do?”

Nothing. If people and/or communities coming in through Threads are engaging in good faith, cool, more nice folks to have a community with. People/communities engaging in bad faith get blocked/defederated as is already common practice (and seems to be working outstandingly already, looking at average quality of posts and discourse “here” as compared to the “big platforms”).

When Meta/Threads is hosting communities I like to see/be a part of, I’ll figure out how to subscribe/integrate those. Besides that, they’re free and welcome to run echo chambers in their own instances and communities, I don’t see how any of that would ever show up on my feed.

I guess this will already have been said, but nonetheless:

I like the feeling of community as it is right now in the Fediverse very much.

Most of me hopes that it will not successfully federate with Meta, ever; or if it “must”, in a way that will be mostly irrelevant to me (communities I wouldn’t subscribe to in the first place, anyway).

I don’t see how that, in turn, would give Meta any control over the parts of the Fediverse that I care about. If they want to join and contribute in good faith, fine. If not, also fine. Why should it change anything for Fediverse “centered” communities?

I never cared about size or majority, but about quality of content and discourse. And I find that in those points, the current Fediverse much outshines anything else I’ve seen (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, …) in the last decade or so.