I think you may be a bit off the mark on that prediction. Bastyon already has an order of magnitude more users than Lemmy.
https://bastyon.com/bastyon_team?s=be343ea63fce804e1aad0047d3eb3a9135f9d1afa317a44cad034d58483f1bc0
This is only the website, there are also ~100k app users.
what advantages does it have over hosting your own fedi server
Specifically in the context of this post you cannot be forced to collect any data on users or be prosecuted for not collecting because you are not hosting accounts, they are on-schain. Fedi is a very different type of platform and not really a direct alternative. Bastyon is trying to compete with twitter mainly IMO.
You do not get any special access or control by hosting a server because it is just a node that relays data. This makes the network more robust and faster as a user's app will connect to the fastest nodes for a better experience.
Here is an in-depth article about the platform
https://www.publish0x.com/at-scottcbusiness/the-guide-to-bastyon-and-pkoin-xznxqdk
How does Bastyon work? - https://bastyon.com/help?page=faq
You do not understand the platform and are speaking out of ignorance. You do not need to run a node to use the platform and no one can stop you from joining.
If you run a node you participate in the network, your user does not reside or originate from your node it is distributed as all metadata is stored on chain.
Maybe it's not for you, no one is forcing you to use it, it is not all about you.
A woman protesting an oppressive regime with her posts may find it is the only safe place without getting her identity reported back to the oppressive state as all corporate owned platforms would do.
Good job looking into it a bit instead of freaking out like most others on here. It is running and working and has been for over 6 years if I am not mistaken, it was named pocketnet previously.
Users do not have to pay to publish. Advertisers can pay to boost content and get visibility. There are many people dedicated to free speech and anti-censorship so they will continue to run nodes even if they are not turning a profit. At this point nodes stake coins and earn rewards, not sure of the long term tokenomics, have not gone super deep on it.
If they pass a law that social media platforms need to collect ID the instance you run will have to collect ID or shut down. No single entity runs Bastyon and no ID laws can be enforced.
The website is just a fronted, it is not running the platform. If the website is shut down you can still access the platform via the open source app, it cannot be stopped.
No, it is not. Mastodon is federated, this means your account is owned by the instance owner and can be banned. Bastyon is decentralized meaning there is no owner, your content can be blocked if there is a report and a random jury of high reputation users unanimously agrees that rules have been violated.
They do, the website is just a portal to the network for exposure. Using the app is the real Bastyon.
https://github.com/pocketnetteam/pocketnet.gui/releases
or
Yes, Odysee is much better than YT, they will not block you for using a VPN and you can use burner a email to sign up. They also do not have annoying ads every 3 minutes, they have zero ads. Sad that so many creators refuse to post their content on other platforms and continue to support YT's tyrannical monopoly. Still there is a pretty good selection on there.