@aral Imo the consequences are already showing.
When an admin declares support for Meta, they might as well post “I want to tell you all I sold you to the company most of you just fled from. They offered me a lot of money - and you all little ants and your opinions about protecting your data etc, never were especially important to me/us anyway. Cheers!”
I think people will leave instances that doesn’t protect them, some might look at self hosting etc, some might leave the fediverse for good.