So, as a rexxit refugee who doesn't fully understand the details of federation, I have a question. When I make a post or comment and it gets shared out, is the actual content shared out, or just a link back to my content. Because I can see Threads issues either way: if copies of the content get shared and Threads' userbase is so incredibly massive, then all the smaller instances are going to struggle with storage. And if links are shared, then smaller instances are going to struggle with traffic. [I suspect both storage and traffic will be issues anyway, but that each is more of a problem depending on how communication and federation is handled.]
It's just something I've been curious about, because most of the comments I've seen have been about the difficulty of moderating the content, or what Meta will do with the data or your they'll take over, but I don't recall seeing anything about the strain on actual infrastructure and the additional cost to support the influx of users.