As another happy Fairphone user, I’d caution against getting one though if you don’t see the hefty price tag as also being a way of subsidizing right to repair and fair trade. The long warranty period and support duration, the repairability, and the SD card slot might not be enough positives to offset it being bulky, heavy, the camera being terrible, security updates coming with 1-2 months of delay, the specs being generally under what you’d find around its price range and you going 300 USD over budget.

Personally, I’d only ever owned a low-end smartphone that was 4 years past its end of support before getting the Fairphone, so I’ve been very happy with it, but I can see the drawbacks mattering more to other people.

Not convinced by the e-mail analogy rebuttal. There are plenty of small e-mail providers thriving alongside the giants. Nothing is stopping you today from paying your friendly local business or association to host a mailbox for you. Of course self-hosting e-mail is an absolute pain, but that’s because most e-mail sent is spam, the drastic blocking is just needed. Similarly if the Fediverse sees any kind of meaningful adoption, preemptively blocking small instances will just be needed to crack down on spam.

I’m cautiously optimistic about Meta adopting Activitypub for their new platform. It might signal enough interest to make other smaller (and more trustworthy!) actors follow suit and set up their own platforms or Mastodon instances.