Three philosophies...
A bunch of people and projects rallying around and trying to force adoption of a "standard social networking protocol" for the free web, but building it on a framework that is completely unsuited for the task. "This protocol solves all problems. If this protocol doesn't solve your unique problem, you need to get real - forget that problem and create a problem which this protocol solves."
Another bunch of people who think that replacing Facebook is simply a matter of elegant web design and believe that building cryptographically secure and private protocols is a simple matter of assembling building blocks from ten year old textbooks. If they come across a feature that is a challenge and requires work, they will usually come up with the excuse that it was a stupid idea to begin with.
Some farmer in Australia who has spent decades working with decentralised protocols and is trying several new approaches to the underlying systems to implement stuff that the centralised social providers already have but that the decentralised projects and protocols do not. He is successful in doing this but nobody cares because he's too busy designing and building stuff and doesn't spend much time or energy on marketing. He once worked for one of the large providers and decided he could no longer live a life of allegiance to corporate interests that were driven by greed and divorced from ethics.
And so it goes.
The year is 2019 2010.