The author argues that truly decentralized networks don't exist—every protocol centralizes power somewhere, just on different axes. He identifies five potential chokepoints: identity (who you are), connectivity (message routing), discovery (finding people), cost (who pays for infrastructure), and moderation. The real question isn't whether a system is decentralized, but which of these four it sacrifices and whether you can live with the consequences. Looking at actual networks, the pattern holds everywhere. Mastodon federates beautifully but ties identity to individual instances—lose your server, lose your account. Nostr solves identity with cryptographic keys, but the cost becomes crushing: a 2024 study found each post copies across 34.6 relays on average, wasting 98.2% of download traffic (144 terabytes discarded), and 95% of free relays don't cover their costs. Bluesky claims federation but runs the critical relay and AppView infrastructure itself, making it prohibitively expensive for others to replicate. Matrix and XMPP face the same identity problem as Mastodon—your account depends on your homeserver surviving. The author's own project, Org Social, trades off discovery for efficiency. It stores identity as a URL you control and needs minimal hosting (literally a text file), but finding new people requires a centralized relay. If that relay fails, the network degrades unless you already follow everyone. The takeaway: stop asking if something is decentralized. Instead, identify which component each system concentrated, then decide if that tradeoff works for you.