I think that what isn't immediately obvious when most people consider the big silo websites is:
1) The army of moderators that are constantly fighting to remove illegal, offensive, or commercially damaging content. (Twitter might not care about bots posting lies to sway voters, but it doesn't want a reputation that kids are following fake celebrity accounts that post beheading videos every few months).
2) The fact that these sites, by acting as middle men (and mass surveillance infrastructures), get to calculate people's reputation, which is difficult to export between sites in a meaningful way, and is hard to replicate in a decentralised/federated architecture.
I think that what isn't immediately obvious when most people consider the big silo websites is:
1) The army of moderators that are constantly fighting to remove illegal, offensive, or commercially damaging content. (Twitter might not care about bots posting lies to sway voters, but it doesn't want a reputation that kids are following fake celebrity accounts that post beheading videos every few months).
2) The fact that these sites, by acting as middle men (and mass surveillance infrastructures), get to calculate people's reputation, which is difficult to export between sites in a meaningful way, and is hard to replicate in a decentralised/federated architecture.