I’m no lawyer but I don’t even think it’s that complex.

The law as written states “…However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President.”

It goes on the clarify in a little more detail what a " qualified divestiture" is, but ultimately the determination seems to be by the President.

Trump can “make a deal” that he considers a “qualified divestiture” and allow the app again. For example ByteDance can sell TikTok to AmericaDance, a new company that just so happens to work for and does everything ByteDance does.

Now this wouldn’t hold up in any real court, but that would take A LONG time to resolve at which point Trump declares a win and likely everyone just moves on. Bonus during the 2028 election Vance or whomever can say that Democrats want to ban TikTok.

If no one cares enough to reopen it once every 6 months, then it’s probably fine to ignore it indefinitely.

It’s a matter of psychology. If I file a bug and it is ignored for years, I’m annoyed but eventually I either accept it, find a workaround or move on to something new. I may still file bugs in the future, especially if I’ve got a workaround, since other people probably want to know.

However if my bug is closed and I have to reopen it every six months. Now I’m kinda pissed. I have to be reminded every six months for years that this is just broken. I put in the effort, but now some bot has just come along and closed it. Plus it’s going to be harder to find an existing or similar bug. I’m less likely to look at closed bugs. But also, what if I find four similar closer bugs. Now if someone was tracking that bug they don’t realize this has happened to four different users. If we had just kept it in one big we’d all know. Also someone elses workaround is better than mine, or maybe it’s worse.

I understand if a project wants to declare bug bankruptcy. It shouldn’t happen often but if you do that’s the time to organize things.

I agree it was expected but it’s important that it happened.

I’ve always assumed Meta’s investment in Threads’s ActivityPub compatibility was purely to show the EU, “Hey look, we’re trying to follow the open standard.”

For that reason I’ve believed that giving Meta a VERY short leash was reasonable. While I believed them to be full of shit, I think extending an olive branch and allowing them to be part of the Fediverse at large was a worthwhile effort.

They have however put almost no effort into being a good part of the Fediverse. They’ve implemented minor features and sharing, just enough to say " technically we’re working on it."

Now we can see them directly blocking. Now maybe in a few days they’ll say “whoopsie”, but I think this clearly shows they truly have no interest or intention of being part of the Fediverse.

I’m not surprised by this. I fully expected this. But I was willing to give them a chance. Maybe they didn’t deserve that chance. I think they’ve certainly forfeited it now.