The grandparent does not present a dichotomy, let alone a false one. It says that when you are not using email patches, the network effect of the platform (like Gitea which you present as if it was explicitly excluded by the grandparent) is important.
> This was the case even when SourceHut was the “official” source and GitHub was a mirror (I also have a GitLab mirror, which probably never received a single contribution): the vast majority of the contributions were on the GitHub mirror, while SourceHut was adding friction to my maintenance work.