Yeah, I'm a little confused by the doom-and-gloom regarding all this. Meta/etc. can only ruin the Fediverse if we let them. I really doubt most people currently on lemmy/kbin/mastodon are going to abandon the smaller instances in favor of a Big Corp instance, which IMHO is the big way they can ruin it (consolidate users from smaller instances and then pull the plug). I think there is even an opportunity here to really grow the Fediverse

smaller instances can (and should!) steal users from Big Corp instances.

Of course this may just be wishful thinking. With their track record, who knows what's possible I guess. (For example, I fully expect non-meta users to be 2nd class citizens on a meta instance...)