Wow this question is all over the place. I want to call out the privacy bit though. The fediverse is NOT private. You are anonymous, and really pseudo anonymous. Everything you post here is shared with anyone listening though. There are guidelines for how to implement the protocol, but they are not rules. Things like deletes do not have to be honored. Any gov agency can spin up an instance and listen.
We can act like we’re anonymous, but unless your hosting your own somewhere far off with no logs and zero way to trace it back to you, you’re still open. Open web means open, it’s what we want. The open web means no single entity can shut down the whole of the fediverse. The flip side is that you are also out there in the open.
Apple changed to the app store model years ago and people preferred it. Hell my grandma uses Linux now