@J12t That is a good question!
The kind of control I had in mind is about owning our data and knowing what happens with it, and being able to make decisions about it, either by appealing to the maintainers of the instances we're on, or moving to another one. Or running our server. And there is also control over our experience because of a lack of algorithms designed to rile us up into more "user activity".
@stefan I’m not sure that’s actually entirely true. I for one do not know what happens to my data on the various fediverse instances I’m on. I settle for “oh, I know some of the social.coop key people and I trust them” but then, my trust may be misplaced and I cannot be certain all people who, say, have access to the backup tapes are even qualified to understand how to handle them properly.