>> but as people get more disillusioned with Meta and X, there is always a space for competing platforms.

Diaspora way back when had a chance to take hold of the flame and do some damage to Meta. Even after it was released, I moved to it immediately. Nobody from any other social platform would join me.

Its one thing to create a decentralized platform, its quite another to overcome the network effect where friends and family and have other friends and family and they can't move now because none of their friends or family will move. This is why there was a very narrow window before Meta became the juggernaut it is today to get people to move to a more decentralized platform.

Now? Close to 100% impossible to win that game - regardless of the opportunity for freedom from censorship and government overreach. There will be small pockets of people moving to them, but there's a good chance we will never see the kind of numbers that Meta, X, YouTube or other platforms have right now. They are just so entrenched at this point.