It sounds like he's spelled out a pretty distinct goal. "I want to create a platform that can be run from a tiny, low-power server running on a home Internet c

It sounds like he's spelled out a pretty distinct goal. "I want to create a platform that can be run from a tiny, low-power server running on a home Internet connection. My primary goal for Xnet is to prove that--contrary to everything everyone else says--one does not need a huge, expensive server on a super-fast Internet connection to host a social network with tens of thousands of users. The reason I want to demonstrate this with a real-world example running live on the Internet is to help average people understand that free speech on the Internet does not have to disappear. Anyone of even less-than-average means can help take it back from billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. This is not a hard vision to understand. I think spreading this message is much more important than anything I could contribute to society with one social network run by me. While I am sure that scaling up Xnet would have been a fun project for the latest person to offer his help, this is not what the project is about." I can't fault this at all. Doesn't mean it has to be my goal (though what I do has many common factors), but from where I'm standing he's doing all the right things, in the right way, and making the right choices around them. Now, the catch is: part of his goal is making 'average people' take back control of social networks from giant networks that benefit from, well, network effects :) and spreading this message is fundamental to his goal. So from where I'm standing, his goal is literally unachievable. Average people will not understand or do this. Small groups of super-fans will do this, and they will fail to spread his message, they'll just carry it as well as they can. If anyone does spread it it will be by degrading it in exactly the way he fears, expanding it until it's serving far larger and less motivated populations and requiring specialized hosting, not just democratized average hosting. If he won't get 'average people' to replace Twitter and Facebook with self-hosting his platform, does that mean his platform shouldn't exist? I think it probably should exist, and that requires it to be his way.