i was a teenager during the era most normies would consider the "wild west" era of the internet

i was much, much safer on the world wide web then than i am now

there was less money involved, of course

the lack of vetting of identity meant there were less "security" records that could end up in a leak and a doxx

we all remembered the rules of internet safety and hadn't been tricked by facebook and twitter into leaving this disgusting invisible-to-humans trail of identity vulnerabilities

we can recreate that older environment elsewhere on the web and for a lot of people fedi is an important part of that recreation

the freedom to shitpost and not be subject to these centralized authoritarian power grabs is essential to that safety