Fediverse memes

Indeed. If you invent your own protocol you would have to make it easy to set-up an instance and there should be a good reason why you'd want to. As it doesn't and there isn't, either some very clever people are very bad at their job or this is the point.

As most Bluesky users don't care (they're just grateful for somewhere like Xitter they can go to) I don't really see much coming of this aspect but, if any regulators pull them up for any issues it is always there as a Get Out of Jail Free card - we can't be anticompetitive because we have federation (swap "anticompetitive" for whatever enshittification shenanigans they come up with further down the line).