I know this is a negative take but does someone have an explanation or an understanding of whether this project means anything from a practical standpoint?
Framasoft is the antithesis of y-combinator.
Sometimes they reach a wide audience, like framapad and framadate, which are quite popular in France and Western Europe. Partly because they just work and don't require you to create an account.
Sometimes nobody really knows who it's for.
Most of the time people often mistakenly think it's an isofunctional 1:1 alternative to another product. When it's not.
Because they are not platforms: they are software, free to use. Their audience is systems administrators, not users.
Either the user is it's own systems administrator, or someone else has to do it... And in any case there is infrastructure to be paid for. Most users currently prefer someone else to do it and the price to be the watching of advertisements.
I believe a sweet halfway point is hosting cooperatives - not free of cost, but delivering user-control at a reasonable cost to users who do not wish to take on the burden of sysadmining.
It isn't about being on YouTube. It's about being able to share your media/information in a way that you feel comfortable.
These projects are for people to explore self hosting or creating a platform based around the ideology the software respects.
I personally self host nearly all my stuff. I'm a photographer/videographer/tech contractor and it allows me full control over my ecosystem without sacrificing my data.
The folks running these aren't really interested in building a big social network or spending hours everyday scrolling what other people are doing.