It doesn't, at all. I'm not sure why Gruber is hung up on seeing Mastodon as a monolith that intends to replace Twitter.
The whole point of federation is to not be a monolith where one change in the rules affects everyone in the network.
The whole point of federation is to not be a monolith where one change in the rules affects everyone in the network.
Mastodon isn't a brand so much as it's a grouping of a bunch of different brands (servers). In a way Mastodon can't win or lose because of this. If you have 10 people on a server and they're happy- you've won.
Gruber has a hard time wrapping his head around this, partially because it's just not his thing.