Meta essentially forces every instagram user to install threads....so it's more forced growth than natural growth

No, they don't. They do heavily push suggested Threads posts in the IG feed, though.

That's because Blacksky and Threads address wildly different markets.

Blacksky's market is literally orders of magnitude smaller. That's quite a growth curve when adjusted for market size.

That's fine. The mainstream is a cesspool of shit and stupidity, and the rest of the world is welcome to drown in it.