The big potential difference is that the early decentralized systems like Usenet and Relay treated costs and spam and paying their developers as out-of-band con

The big potential difference is that the early decentralized systems like Usenet and Relay treated costs and spam and paying their developers as out-of-band concerns. Whatever else you think of the newer stuff around blockchains, etc., it changes the game in just this way. If you want an online world not under the thumbs of Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc., you need a thesis about how the same takeover won't happen.