> The solution is a platform that doesn't have these mismatched incentives (either paid for, ran by donations, etc) but that otherwise has the user experience o

> The solution is a platform that doesn't have these mismatched incentives (either paid for, ran by donations, etc) but that otherwise has the user experience of the mainsteam platforms. Isn't it kind of inevitable that those incentives manifest themselves? A company can run a centralized platform, do a good job of it, then get bought out for millions(if not billions) by a large corporation and redesigned to maximize ad revenue and the egos of those looking for greater job titles. This isn't exactly unheard of. Decentralization would supposedly section this kind of thing off if it even happens at all. You're right that the average person doesn't care about decentralization, let alone understand it. That's fine. Before Facebook, people used forums supported by vBulletin, and those were effectively "decentralized" in the sense that they weren't all owned by the same entity. The only difference was that there wasn't sharing of data between 2 or more web forums, like there could be with something that supports ActivityPub or the like.