IMO, federation is a better model of this. With Mastodon, sure somebody is still paying server costs, but there is no unavoidable fee for the software/service a

IMO, federation is a better model of this. With Mastodon, sure somebody is still paying server costs, but there is no unavoidable fee for the software/service and it has the same censorship-resistent properties. (I'd like to see signed messages in Mastodon but that's not a problem inherent to a federated model)