"The alternative on which we can build a great new Internet era is projects like GNU social, Friendica, Hubzilla, Diaspora, and efforts to design common protocols like ActivityPub, not on the blockchain."
All the new federated social systems have failed, replaced by commercial, centralized systems. (IRC and email live on. Google thinks it owns Usenet, rebranded as "Google Groups", and a big chunk of email never passes through SMTP.) Why? We had a good discussion of this recently by the creator of WhatsApp(?). Centralized systems can be upgraded and enhanced. Federated systems require massive cooperation to change. And federated systems don't generate much revenue.