If I remember that comment right, wasn’t it more about government takedown of central authorities? Nodes, in this case?

If other powers gain control of the node, what happens?

two points on this.

1. The fediverse has nodes too. But they own identities where nostr nodes do not. However, activity pub also relies on domain name resolution. Nostr does not. so nostr is more decentralized in that regard.

2. Because internet is a common carrier that has government funding in the united states they get free speech protection. So you can host it in your house and it won’t be seized. It’s just a ip address.

You could even host a relay from your phone.

To be fair, I haven’t studied how nodes even work, but I suspect some will get large enough to self-destruct the whole point. Like lemmy.world, where they seem to ban and block at a whim, unless it’s pedo stuff. That shit stays.

So there will likely always be a couple really large relays everyone uses. But users always use more than one. And data is copied to all of your relays when you post. When one goes down everyone will just shuffle over it’s not a big deal. When lemmy.world goes down lots of stuff will be lost forever. Everyone’s communities will be orphaned. Accounts gone. ect.

There is no private data on the relays. I can give you a copy of my relay database right now and it’s no big deal.