For as long as this article is, it is remarkably free of journalism. It is basically a press release from Meta saying that they're planning to implement Threads in a few months, and don't feel like saying more about it than that.
“Do we adapt the protocol to be able to support this?” Lambert asks. “Or do we try to do some kind of interesting, unique implementation?”
This is a fascinating question, both in its lack of an answer, and in the inherent framing of the question that of course they're going to introduce incompatibilities, and the discussion is simply about how to do it.
Mastodon allows some artistic nudity
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Additionally, specifics are still murky regarding exactly how user data will be handled after the connections between networks are established. For example, if you federate a post from Threads and decide to delete it afterwards, what happens to the cached post on the servers of the other networks?
That... is not the central question that's on people minds about how user data will be handled. Presumably you were in a position to ask Rachel Lambert, the product manager at Meta who started the company's journey towards interoperability, a more obvious and salient question, and include in your article her response.
Meta is treading carefully, doing a phased implementation while continuing conversations with Fediverse leaders.
Who are these leaders and what are they saying about this? This, also, seems like it would have been pertinent information to include. If Meta's answer was "You're not allowed to know that at present," then including that response seems like it would have made the article quite a bit more informative than simply pretending it didn't occur to you to ask for any details about this.