Agree with you.
One thing I have always found precious for my 10+ yrs on forums like reddit and 3+ yrs on fediverse is how high quality conversations are by people who usually don’t obsess about numbers and publicity in likes and upvotes etc.
Genuine communities here on the fediverse will evolve at their own pace.
But who, exactly, is supposed to create this “niche content” for them? I think this is something we underestimate—large swaths of people see themselves as consumers of quality content. It is not for them to bring in comments or interesting finds to the communities. This I think is what makes the internet ripe for centralization. You can’t be a non-paying consumer and choose your menu. You can pay with your behavior datapoints and get fads packaged to you, or you can help create an ecosystem where you don’t have to be spied on every click and tap of the day. Choose your path and make peace with it. The worst would be to help create content for a community and be spied while at it.
What do you mean both sides are the same? They are not. One is 6 and the other is 9.
Edit: I don’t mean it in a cynical way. Just that positioning matters in establishing truth. It is not just a matter of perspective (defined as subjective perception) but rather a matter of position (defined as inter-subjective agreement).
Off-topic, your hair looks like it’s charged by your touching the coffee cup.
Who actually built it? Who, in the US, built it? You’ll be surprised at how much of a distraction “states” are in understanding International action. The same people who set up Israel set up the post-WWII institutions. They have been the greatest beneficiaries of that order and don’t care about nations or states or those categories. What matters is they benefit from as much of human labour as possible.