

Decentralization may help, and not profiting off targeted advertising too I think.
The reason we lost a big chunk of the old forums over the past few years is due to much of this stuff too, but I think the fediverse may be a little more malleable to weather storms.
One can migrate accounts across servers, move to different jurisdictions, roll your own server and the interact across different fediverse platforms.
Afair Mastodon were looking to integrate email as a way to both get content and post content which could also help accessibility.







Either is fine.
I tend towards ubuntu lts pro with automatic upgrades and reboots. Much like the guide you mention pretty much everything targets ubuntu lts.