While the second paragraph has been slightly debunked, the first paragraph is an interesting idea I’ve underappreciated/neglected until now.
What do you think? Perhaps this is easier/more-scaleable than having federated instances with decentralised and often complex governance?
This is independent of the centralisation/Decentralisation part. Infrastructure and Moderation costs are created anyways. Ideally, these are finances by community donations and co. But a non-profit isn’t going to focus on profit, because it’s non-profit and because the community at large can vote them out if they start to worsen the platform.
In general I agree with your benefits of decentralisation. However, for people not much into Lemmy/Reddit/etc. the decision making is indeed much more difficult - and hard to comprehend.