[TheRealPomax]

Island influence stops at the water. Yes, you might get quite famous on your own island, and if that's what you're going for, power to you. Everything from mailing lists to mastodon will do that for you. But if you want to reach "everyone", you need a network that will potentially broadcast to "everyone". Should you want to reach "everyone"? Very different question, but that's not the issue raised. The upside to users on a centralised platform is that their potential reach is that entire platform's user base. The exact same is true for any other platform, but the numbers differ by orders of magnitude, and as we all know: bigger number must be better.

[the-printer]

This is not a refutation because I think that you’ve given a nice response to the topic. But I think that the people who are concerned or interested with reaching “everyone” deserve being beholden to the Big Box platforms of today; whichever ones rise and gain steam in the future that use phrases like “foster dialogue and bring people together” in lieu of “drive engagement and bring in ad dollars” then crash and burn under the weight of internal whistleblowers and damning The Guardian exposés.

I think the future of online communities will be community for the sake of community…and nothing else. Very mundane and boring on the outside, driven by nothing other than “I’m sharing waffle recipes and I’m going to just upload them to the internet on my hosting provider or via my old Compaq Presario and I do not care about engagements just email me later and goodbye.”