>the constituency of admins who actually host software to power their own websites or community websites is more pressing to me than fedi users in the abstract
Sure, this is important, and by "existing users" I mean all developers, server operators and regular users.
>right now i am grappling with a network that is terribly broken because i have people who can't follow me and people i can't even see from my instance, and that's without any blocks involved
Are you talking about your own implementation? I can help with debugging
>that's just weird undiagnosable software issues from a fundamentally incomplete protocol
Let's not confuse protocols and specifications. ActivityPub specification is incomplete and IMHO beyond repair.
Fediverse protocol is a different thing, it is more or less complete, and allows platforms as different as PeerTube, Lemmy and Mastodon to happily interoperate. This protocol doesn't have a specification, but I am working on it: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/guide.md
A protocol is like language. Languages are created by people who use them, not by people who write dictionaries. Same goes for protocols, and there is probably no better illustration of this than Fediverse.
>a future where hosting a personal website is as easy or even easier than posting to social media
Isn't it already easier? A static site with an Atom feed?
In any case, I think the best way to secure this future is to build things. What have SWICG achieved since its reboot? I can name only two useful outputs: HTTP signature report and WebFinger report. The rest is pointless bikeshedding and politicking.
