He didn’t want to buy the company. So, he’s turning it into a pet project.

That’s a good point, and one that had not occurred to me. For all we know, he’s already mentally written off the $44 billion as a loss and is just having fun with it, with no expectation of success.

That would explain a lot.

It might also help with the potential problem of entire communities being eradicated by rogue actions from an instance admin, or instance issues in general. If the community is spread out across multiple instances, it can weather problems on its “main” instance without being as easily dispersed.

That’s what they want you to think. (not sure if I’m being sarcastic or not)

Even if that’s true, once they become a part of the ecosystem, they will start looking for ways to dominate it. That’s just the nature of for-profit corporations.