@J12t My guess is that folk at Meta finally realized that they can maintain useful dominance even within an "open" SocialWeb. The reality is that there are still many network effects associated with large platforms. (Mastodon.social is a good example) While theory may argue that being open may result in fragmentation, in practice it doesn't.

An "open" Meta encourages the troublesome folk to federate elsewhere while staying connected and thus somewhat co-opted.