that was quite a lot to unpack from the quotes around never in the head (?) of the thread
https://hachyderm.io/@jmangt/109348887292670081

and still I feel you're making a distinction that doesn't hold. banking, telephone, email are federated structures got wide popular acceptance without hiding the underlying network, and requiring service users to explicitly make a choice of service suppliers to join the network, without centralized or seemingly-centralized service, or even without requiring boutique ways to join.
retail bank branches are by no means boutiques. phone shops seem designed to repel customers. email had a wide reach before google, microsoft and yahoo turned an efficient federated system into a recentralized web-based abomination.

so that's 3 examples that counter this theory. do you have any single example to support it?