Milton: We use only the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.

Praline: That’s as maybe, it’s still a frog.

Milton: What else?

Praline: Well don’t you even take the bones out?

Milton: If we took the bones out it wouldn’t be crunchy would it?

Praline: Superintendent Parrot ate one of those.

Parrot: Excuse me a moment. (exits hurriedly)

Milton: It says ‘crunchy frog’ quite clearly.

Praline: Well, the superintendent thought it was an almond whirl. People won’t expect there to be a frog in there. They’re bound to think it’s some form of mock frog.

Milton: (insulted) Mock frog? We use no artificial preservatives or additives of any kind!

Praline: Nevertheless, I must warn you that in future you should delete the words ‘crunchy frog’, and replace them with the legend ‘crunchy raw unboned real dead frog’, if you want to avoid prosecution.

I get this argument… but I keep seeing folks talk about Threads as if it’s somehow an existential threat to Mastodon rather than “big crappy instance with asshats on it,” and I don’t quite understand how it’s more than that… at least at a level that users and instance admins have any influence over. Can someone ELI5?

Oh, neat! Thanks for pointing out the USA centrist viewpoint I had there! My bad indeed!

For what it’s worth, if you post a story (for example) to the open internet – your blog, social media – and there is NOT a paywall or explicitly restricted access, many (if not all) publishers will consider that material previously published. That doesn’t mean it’s public domain at all, but it does recognize that the work is not private. Likewise, I’d consider any social media post being akin to posting a sign in my front yard. If someone does the work of driving by and taking pictures of the signs in my front lawn, that’s their right – unless I’m in a closed, gated community.

Then again, i see people thinking that they somehow “own” their Facebook feed, so …