Scott if the network platform was not profit driven (ie if it was solar powered by a "money-fuel tree"), there would be no need to minimise traffic between unprofitable connections (the vast majority) , in order to reduce network traffic, server load would not be a concern, everyone would have visibility of all conversations, if they so wished. (Also we would have no subscription fees, in fact it would be the other way round, the network would pay us a significant income for our time spent) So there would be no need for profit driven algorithms selecting who gets to see what in their feeds, we would have complete control over that as users. Network clustering is the technical term for how a physical network looks, when it is handled this way for profit. Each physical cluster is a social bubble. Within a cluster there is high intrrconnectivity between the members of the cluster, and low connectivity with any other cluster. Like this the network "value" (profit, and capital value) can be estimated using a mathematical rule named "Reede's law".
Unclustered networks in theory connect all people with all others equally, therefore profit has no meaning, only network value, which is given by "Metcalfe's law", which states that the network value is proprtional to the square of the number of users.
So removal of nodes, by cancelling, dividing, censoring, firewalling, etc, all of which are again driven by profit, all serve to seriously reduce the network value to humanity as a whole.
The world we can, and must have when solar power is finally formally monetised, will be a very different one than we know today.