Yeah, I agree with everything you’re saying. I don’t really expect fediverse to displace commercial platforms any time soon, and the fact that it’s much easier for content creator to monetize their content.

That said, I think fediverse is now big enough that it’s not going anywhere. It’s also worth noting that open source has a very different dynamic from commercial platforms. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them. All of that makes open source far more resilient than commercial platforms. If a company runs out of money then it folds and the platform goes away. Fediverse just needs to have a big enough user base to be self sustaining, and I think we’re well past that point already.

I would also argue that a lot of things that make commercial platforms attractive are actually negatives. A lot of the viral content is often just sponsored advertisements in disguise. Prominent content creators end up shilling for companies while disguising it as being educational content. Veritasium running propaganda for self driving car companies is a good recent example of that. I think any solutions that focus on fast growth will end up creating similar problems in the fediverse as well.