There’s no doubt they have an ulterior motive. The way they’re federating right now is very one-sided and basically tells people they can just post on Threads and get the best of both worlds as they reach both audiences.
However, I see no harm from this to the dedicated Mastodon users who boycott or avoid Meta. They now get to follow Threads accounts without sharing their phone number or other personal information with Meta.
The data collection argument is weak, since everything you post on Mastodon is already public.
In the post I linked, they talk about issuing refunds and that the game is played well via Proton, so I wouldn’t classify that as telling the users to get effed. And again, it’s not unheard of for games and software to no longer support specific operating systems after a while. If you’re a Windows 7 user, your whole Steam library would become unavailable unless you switch. Sure, you can upgrade, but a Linux player of Rocket League can also switch to the Proton/Wine version, which is even less drastic.
Upgrading to DirectX 11 and 64-bit is a valid reason. The Linux version would probably require a rewrite for the 0.3%. Compare this to Valve making Steam unavailable on Windows 7 despite it being used by 0.75% of their users.
That’s fair, but I don’t think the same is true for most people. There is still a lot missing from the Fediverse in terms of prompt or important updates, especially if related to a matter outside the mainstream. I truly wish everyone had a presence on the Fedi platforms, but that’s just not the reality when even some of the biggest ideological opponents of Musk or Zuckerberg still actively use their platforms, even if their views or practices threaten their very existence.
At the end of the day, the reason even Privacy Guides recommends all the alternative frontends for sites like YouTube is to allow people to stay in the loop without having to share anything with those platforms that collect and sell data. With Nitter dead and Threads being the next big thing after Twitter, the federation could work as a viable frontend and potentially more.