Having big websites where a lot of activity happens has had benefits. You can have a few accounts to access a lot of information, and that information goes with you wherever you are thanks to mobile computing. It's brought a lot of convenience for people, especially those who aren't tech savvy or aren't interested in the Internet itself.
But we got those websites for free out of a drive for growth, and now things are changing. They are walling themselves off to try and make money off of their users. Reddit and Twitter blocked third-party apps. Reddit stopped indexing with anything other than Google. Forums have now all moved to Discord, in which information can't get out.
Federated Internet services do interest me, and I can see how it might be the way forward, but the current options aren't compelling enough. Mastodon and Lemmy are just copying Twitter and Reddit, don't offer anything new, and come with their own new problems. Matrix is just not a nice user experience and is lacking the features and polish of Discord.
I'm really interested in how the Internet will change in the future. The change we are seeing right now isn't good, but that doesn't mean that change won't change, if I make sense... 😁