Gregory's ServerTotally agree with everything you say. It didn't need to end up this way and shouldn't have.
Unfortunately, huge swathes are now in those walled gardens, and the longer it goes on, the higher and higher the switching costs become. It's likely to become more common to be baked into hardware and OS.
I have no idea how it will play out though. I can't imagine the EU or FCC mandating federation or portability.
@jimothy @lisae I’m not convinced it’s too late. It feels like both Twitter and FB/Meta (the two worst offenders IMHO) are starting to crumble, both for different but similar reasons: clueless leadership. It’s happened before, that momentum takes a community away from a dominant player, but never a dominant player with such mass. That just means the motivation to move needs more force behind it. It feels like that’s beginning to happen now. One can hope anyway.