The main problem, as with most centralized web services, is scale. In order to serve an increasing amount of users, the cost and complexity of maintaining the s

The main problem, as with most centralized web services, is scale. In order to serve an increasing amount of users, the cost and complexity of maintaining the service grows exponentially. Most of the problems Big Tech is solving are related to scale. What decentralization does is distribute this cost and complexity to more granular and manageable levels, so that instead of a single company having to carry the maintenance burden, a number of individuals or groups can do so instead. Of course, if the individual instance or whatever distributed unit grows too large itself, then you run into the same problem on a smaller scale. But it's more manageable, each instance can decide how it should be handled, and in practice most instances won't grow to have this problem. That said, decentralization is not meant to solve the cost of running and maintaining infrastructure. That is an inescapable fact of the internet. What it does address is the problem of large companies controlling vast amounts of the internet, and getting to decide how information is shared online, and who gets to have a voice. Twitter and Reddit are prime examples of what we don't want to happen again, and there's no way to accomplish that with a centralized service.