There is a strong rumour going round that some Fediverse developers and admins have held secret discussions with Meta/Facebook under NDAs.
The Fediverse is supposed to be an alliance of open projects built by a broad grassroots base. Its devs/admins are not supposed to hold secret backroom discussions with people who have a horrific track record (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence).
Facebook/Meta is in effect a sociopathic corporation (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data). Nothing good will come of talking to them.
it’s an extraordinary claim, but i don’t disbelieve it. has anyone else heard anything about this?
Yep, back in 2019 Gab joined and almost everybody defderated them immediately. Here’s the post from the Mastodon blog at the time. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/