federated apps never really took off imo, maybe because it matters only for a small fraction of people who's concerned about security or selfhosting or whatsoever else tech people care about nowadays
Nothings scary about it. The techie thing is that most people simply do not care about it. My mum does not care that email is federated but WhatsApp isn't. She just uses them. If anything federation is worse for the average user because it leads to more spam and ossified protocols (does IRC support images yet?).
fair enough, but how can a 'network' be 'social' if there is only one provider. ('Thou shall not have others before me').
Making means of communication a matter of taste of those who don't care won't yield good results. That's what brought us into that surveillance capitalism mess.