It's the protocol also I think, protocols have minds and intentions of their own. We currently have this incentive context wherein those who earn money from operating relays can earn more money when those who run free relays get spammed. And also where free relays will have to pay out to various API providers to deal with spam (visual stuff is LLM intensive), which means an urgent need for monetisation. And what do free relays have to sell besides user data and user attention? Or if the thing to sell is something in a platform paired with that free relay then the relay becomes a loss leader, which is its own dynamic.

I've spend a lot of time in both Hong Kong and Singapore. Hong Kong got the local housing incentives all wrong, while Singapore got them all right. That changes everything.