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> Federation implies decentralization.

No it doesn’t. Gmail is a centralized instance of a federated network.

You can have a federated node that becomes so popular that it’s basically centralized.

This federated/decentralized distinction is pretty common.

You’re dwelling on literal definitions but there are more semantic differences those words have picked up in the communities involved.

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Be kinder, these semantics differences are newer(ish) developments and not everyone knows the area. It's a bit confusing to say federation does imply decentralization point blank.

For a long time, federated architecture was seen as special case of decentralized, for example in designing stuff for internal use. It still makes sense in that context.

In the context of larger external facing systems, I've found it useful to think of federated as "partly decentralized", and "decentralized" is short-hand for "fully decentralized".

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