You
can interact with other players, you just can't lobby up with them, and the scale makes a chance encounter nigh on impossible.
Which is what's so interesting about that aspect of the patch notes. Just how much it narrows that "vicinity" down remains to be seen, but there's little point in it otherwise. The original concept omitted MP because they wanted to reinforce just how massive space really is, but I suspect that play testing has shown that once you've achieved that, interest might wain.
P.s. This is how
massive space really is.
We're amoebas the lot of us...