Arguably the barriers to entry for running your own Fediverse software instance are relatively low, therefore users are at not that much of an admin mercy as with commercial social media platforms. People running their instances for others provide a service and they should be allowed to run them as they wish, in accordance to a tried principle of many self-governing communities where those that actually do things should have the most say in how those things are done. I wouldn’t discount the value of instances being effectively little kingdoms either - it allows them to be ran with focus and purpose. We can’t afford paid admins / moderators and we need them not to burn out, therefore they need a degree of autonomy too. There are many benefits to be found in an instance where leadership simply aligns with your values and you can trust them to do the right thing most of the time, without Wikipedia worth of community rules. Everyone should be encouraged to find an instance like this but it requires thoughtful participation which circles back to the issue that most people don’t want to do this work. There are plenty of solutions that cater to them though. I get the idea that the article takes a stab at the communities becoming dangerous silos but in the world where so much social media thrives on conflict and outrage, there’s a value in a safe space too. We need spaces for people with common beliefs to discuss things without being derailed by already discounted arguments from outside because there’s enormous value in proliferation of ideas happening on an open platform without resorting to closed off spaces.