When a particular social media platform is centralized, you can buy yourself a say percentage of stock and have sway over it (cough tencent), or have a useful idiot ruin the platform (cough musk), or another useful idiot to run propaganda you like anyway (cough truth social, cough fox news, cough newsmax…), or yet another that will sell out it’s host country’s citizens for cold hard cash (cough facebook).
But when that social media platform is decentralized? Well, then you’d need to figure out how to poison the well early on to stave off adoption. The Saudi Arabias, UAEs, Chinas definitely don’t like the idea of lemmy, and it’ll be way harder for them to control if critical mass is hit.