Federated does mean that the network overall does not rely on a specific node. There is no true Mastodon instance, mastodon.social is merely the biggest. I run

Federated does mean that the network overall does not rely on a specific node. There is no true Mastodon instance, mastodon.social is merely the biggest. I run my own mastodon instance and can federate just fine. Federation is distributed to some extend. However, unlike pure p2p where everyone has a node, it's more like little towns and cities where people live together voluntarily. Each one is a different size, each has it's own rules and if people don't like the rules, they can leave and go elsewhere.