The dolphins probably left and their last message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop whilst whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish."
A friend of mine works nights at the receiving desk of a supermarket. It's basically the job you want, minus the sea (and you have to talk to a few truck drivers every once in a while). There is even a cat!
This is basically the idea behind lasers&feelings and all of its hacks. The setting is a well known TV (or book) universe, and the rules are stripped down to the bone (the whole game fits in one page).
It really puts the role playingback into role playing games.
No one does this kind of stuff because someone asked them to do it. This is the kind of useless, insane stuff you do for the lulz, or because someone dared you.
I think that interoperation with big walled gardens is part of the reason why #activitypub exists. Furthermore, there are no technical measures to completely shut off #Threads, and the social measures are unlikely to work.
I know the risks, I'm old enough to remember #Microsoft embracing and extinguishing browsers and open documents, #Goggle defederating from #XMPP and #Facebook predatory tactics.
On the other hand, I think that federation with the big players is unstoppable. The protocol is open and there is no way to get every last instance to defederate. If people want to see the big players' content they'll move to an instance that federates with them. And defederating from those that connect to threads sounds like a Zealot's suicide pact.
I think that the best way to ensure that #Meta plays fair is to create a fediverse that is as diverse, open and vibrant as possible, with plenty of open services (Lemmy, mastodon, misskey...) and commercial ones (Flipboard, tumblr...) so that threads users will feel compelled to interact and miss us if Meta stops federating or shadowbans external content.
If you call them just geologists how would you tell them apart from the night geologists and the woods geologists?