My expectation is that Threads will be too permissive with rules rather than too strict. They’re pretty happy to have LibsOfTikTok on there so they can make money from the stochastic terrorism.
I can see that being an issue until they want to monetize it with advertisers. I imagine they’re crack down harder, although still not hard enough, on the hate speech and misinformation at that point. At which point the rules they impose become the rules every other instance that federates with them has to impose or risk being ostracized. This is speculation of course but I cannot imagine a scenario where they 1) don’t monetize the platform and 2) those advertisers are cool with their ads being right above a post, from a different instance that cannot be moderated by Threads admins, that show users how to pirate that same content.
I suppose it ends up being “their rules are our rules”, but in a “there are no rules and you’ll accept it” sort of way, rather than “adhere to our community standards or we’ll take away 90% of your users”.
Either one is not good for the Fediverse but now you definitely have me questioning which one it will be. I really appreciate you bringing that point up as I really hadn’t considered it at all.