I’ve been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.
Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?
So … for the ELI5 version of the question … Who owns the fediverse?
Your friends sound like they don’t know what free open source software is, or that anyone can launch a lemmy server of their own. Think of Reddit roughly like visiting a cafe, but they can change the hours and duration you stay with your friends, and how much your coffee costs. compared to Lemmy being you meet all your friends in a public park that is open 24/7 and they can invite others and nobody has a say who joins, determines the stay. But random strangers bring coffee because they want to share.