Maybe Bluesky has "won"

Decentralization feels like it's driven more than idealism/zealotry than pragmatism. In theory, I understand the appeal of owning your data. In practice, systems churn. I haven't had a portfolio in years, because I used AppEngine to host mine; they forced everyone to migrate to Python 3 after I'd built it, and I never bothered to update it. Meanwhile, everything I uttered on Facebook in college still exists. (And plenty of precious content that ended up on other services, like Qik, no longer does.)

If "owning" my data means I need to spend time learning a new format and setting up a way to publish that format on a domain I own, and then maintain it into the infinite future, the odds I'm gong to bother are very low.

The Linux chat rooms are on Matrix because highly ideological people are active in Linux communities, but everyone else just uses Discord. And even Matrix has a webapp that makes it almost as easy as Discord.

Yeah, the only people who pragmatically need decentralization are people who are being censored but that's very few people. So everyone incurs extra complexity to benefit a small minority.

I used AppEngine to host mine; they forced everyone to migrate to Python 3 after I'd built it, and I never bothered to update it

This is caused by you writing custom software, not by decentralization. If you were running some off-the-shelf software like WordPress it would probably be updated to keep pace with the world so you wouldn't have to do much.

> the only people who pragmatically need decentralization are people who are being censored but that's very few people.

Are you suggesting that journalists and activists should have their own, separate social network?