It’s also utopian to ignore how funding will support the infrastructure needed, sustaining large-scale services requires reliable funding to at least break even. Hobbyist-run efforts don’t seem viable for this in the long term.

As with most things, trade-offs are present. Pragmatically, I find it more realistic to expect multiple profitable and non-profit organizations running centralized-like index services (as with the AT Protocol) than a fully community-led network (like ActivityPub) scaling effectively at that level.

The second group values smaller, authentic, self-governed, interest-based communities where privacy and decentralization are key. While interconnected, these communities are not designed for mainstream adoption. Instead, their niche focus is intentional and aligns with their core purpose.

They prioritize intentional discovery with global reach, where privacy is less critical given these goals.

The first audience consists of people who want to engage in broader, large-scale conversations around shared interests, avoiding influencer-driven models, non-personalized and opaque algorithms, or ad-based engagement tactics that often result in overwhelming distractions and irrelevant content.