...on paper at least. Despite the fact that its an absolutely privacy nightmare, as most products from Facebook(Meta) are, if Threads delivers on its integration into ActivityPub its a good thing for the folks currently using federated social apps and the folks still stuck on centralized platforms.
First, to be clear, I wouldn't actually recommend anyone goes to create a threads account. So far it does nothing you couldn't get from Mastodon except siphon up as much personal data as possible, at least according to its iOS App Store listing.
And if theres anything we know about Facebook, it will sell every bit of data you give to it to the highest bidder. But of course privacy minded folks aren't the target demographic for this app anyway. It's the average social media user, especially the recently agitated Twitter users that have been limited to viewing a few hundred tweets a day. Threads timing and simple UI is going to make it instantly more successful than any microblogging platform before it. And honestly its an okay app. The main things its lacking is a way to only see content from the people you follow, but otherwise the app is well built and the service onboarded 70 million users without any noticeable public hiccups in the first week.
None of that is what truly excites me about Threads though. Its the promise of integration with ActivityPub and the fediverse. Assuming they actually follow through on the promise, this would be one of the first major platforms to allow you to connect with their users from other platforms. If it is able to truly be a Twitter-killer, that would make it attractive to content creators, athletes, and a number of large organizations. And that means more content being made available to everyone federated with them. It also means that if/when users of Threads become tired of the inevitable advertising or questionable moderation choices they would be able to pack up their content, their connections, and venture to someplace like Mastodon without the need to rebuild all their connections from scratch. It could also motivate more users to create their own niche communities that can attract more users to a federated social network.