@highvizghilliesuit so they could be on their own and not be activitypub compliant, them they'd be just another social networking site and lose the distributed network effect of the fediverse. There's also other protocols like diaspora* & zot that most activitypub apps don't use. Could they update in the future to not federate, sure but that would lose the network effect of tying in to the fediverse. Could they have instance specific features? Sure, but popular ones will be copied