As much as I hate meta and hate the idea of threads federating with us, ultimately you should be able to find or create an instance that aligns with your idea of defeding with them. I would ultimately want the admin of my instance to side with the majority of users rather than drag users kicking and screaming into following their lead.
Besides, if you truly wanted more control over your web experience, we should be more decentralized. Like what the hell are we all doing on the same instance, and being shocked that the decisions of a small group of people is going to affect so many of us. Like we were all encouraged to join smaller instances or make our own precisely for this reason. Like hypothetically, if every popular community was in its own instance, rather than centralized around world, ml, beehaw and kbin, Meta federating with us would not be a big deal. Every community would be able to decide whether they wanted to associate with them or not, and we would be too spread out for it to be worth Meta's while.
Maybe this should be a wake up call for some of ya'll. Spread out and take your own actions, rather than wait for the big instances' admins to act for you.