For me, the biggest red flag is that they decided to create their own protocol when the Fediverse is well on its way with the ActivityPub protocol. They claimed, they decided against ActivityPub, because they expect to be able to come up with something technologically better.

I don’t doubt for a second that some of their techies might have wet dreams about that, but it wouldn’t get financed, if their management and investors didn’t see an angle for making money off of it.

Which is ultimately what this is. Yet another venture-capital-backed company trying to get enough users on board, to the point where network effects prevent the users from leaving, and then the investors will want their money back manifold.

If they open up the protocol too much, the network isn’t under their exclusive control anymore and they lose the ability to squeeze users for money, so I cannot see them following through with their promises of actually making it decentralized.