I think smaller communities are more sustainable and defederation should occur more, not less.

In this case, why bother with the Fediverse in the first place and why should we not go back to the forums of yesteryear?

To be honest: If you don’t have the deeper technical knowledge to implement some secure form of forum / BBS or something like that and if you are dependent on the advice from strangers on the net and LLMs AND you are currently living in a nation where something like that may lead to an “accident”… just don’t. A warzone isn’t the right place to learn to fight.

What would releasing the epstein files change?

Nothing.

Some powerless people would be upset a bit more, there would (possibly) some staged political outrage and then the show moves on. We live in a frozen society, the powers that be will always be and the powerless will always be powerless, the window of opportunity to make changes simply closed in the early 00s.