Domination is orthogonal to a technical federation feature. Once there is enough imbalance you defederate and that’s that. There’s nothing that inherently prevents gross imbalance from forming and the natural forces favoring centralization - such as funding one beefy instance - still apply.
> value proposition for an instance to turn off federation today?
Maybe not today, but it would be the same as any historical netsplit.
> What do you think would happen if Reddit only had 1/2 of the subreddits anyone used and if you could keep access to all the same communities on a competitor?
I think that puts them still in a fucking dominant position. And why automatically assume competitor vs cabal?
Anyway good luck with your project.
I’ve been using the internet since IRC and Usenet - both federated in their own way - both completely marginal.