No, this is not the same old shit, because while yes of course humans are still humans and will do shitty human things the difference is that there is no easy way to enclose the fediverse and force an opinion, censor people speaking out against injustice. or hold the entire network hostage to push a profit for investors.

The Fediverse is still definitely vulnerable to those things, and who knows if longterm whether a large corporation or constellation of authoritarian regimes can critically undermine the Fediverse (we will certainly see attempts at some point), but no matter what happens, anybody can still spin up their own instance of Mastodon, Lemmy or any other fediverse software and start creating an open, new community.

From the perspective of an authoritarian ruling class, the problem of quelling dissent in the masses has gone from buying the one or two tv conglomerate networks that provide news for 100s of millions of people, or buying Reddit, instead you have to keep stamping out Fediverse communities wherever the pop up, in whatever country or legal context they happen to pop up all over the globe.

If you think that the Fediverse taking off and reaching a critical mass where lots of people use it daily for normal social media stuff isn’t a strategic failure for the dictators and ruthless capitalists willing to create mass murder if it nets them a profit I don’t know what to tell you…