@smallcircles to us, it's not weird at all. Humans like pretty shiny things, and I bet Meta hired real psychologists to design Threads - and not only its UI/UX, but to help with the foundation of the platform itself (e.g. what's more important, that posts load fast, or that my posts are noticed by others quickly?).
Most people are simply uninformed, and might believe that because in the future Threads will be a part of the fediverse, Meta can't steal their data.
Compare threads' nice UI to Mastodon's absolutely disastrous and claustrophobic alternative. Sure, Megalodon/Moshidon exists. But people don't know that.