It already happened. They sent their emails just in the middle of the Reddit migration. According to Foucault, powerful individuals use psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology, and social sciences to “discipline bodies and minds and make them obedient and submissive”. He called this concept “biopower”. For example, my most read blog post (which is French-speaking) details how it works in the scope of digital abuse and I’ve only started it two months ago, with almost 500 views on this one alone; it has 6 references and I’ve found other dispositives of power since.
There’s no reason to give them the benefit of doubt over not conducting experiments on unconsenting subjects precisely to drive us mad and (1) make instances defederate, (2) put large Mastodon instance admins under pressure and encourage them to defect, (3) cap the Reddit migration.
Facebook has probably exerced biopower without even starting its #Threads app. It was only a first strike and we can only expect more to come and damage control, especially by moving to Bonfire Networks ASAP and develop a culture of deescalating conflicts. Kinda difficult with so many abuse survivors here – Mastodon are first and foremost Twitter refugees, and not only does Twitter abuse its users, it also monetizes real-life abuse. (Its addictive character can be used as an illusion of solidarity as part of a “flight” coping mechanism, and how do you max out this illusion? Through moral judgements (gossiping). This especially makes sense in the context of a deliberate scarcity in attention, to put its users in concurrence, also leading to conflictual relationships. And so on.)