This is the only response that actually addresses the article and my criticism. You make a good point that pressuring the governmental agencies that distribute funding to adopt a set of requirements could push the entire academic body in a particular direction.

I still don't see the point in choosing federated protocols as a mandate if we were to do this. My preference would be to use that energy towards free and open data sources. I think arXiv is the best example for that and not Mastodon.