Yeah BlueSky is a solid side-step. It's still for-profit and not federated but every BlueSky user is one not on X. And a lot of BlueSky's userbase is comprised of particularly influential X users so them leaving is particularly harmful to the ecosystem.
I also think it's funny how the journalists who repeat BlueSkys "decentralized" nonsense thought Mastodon was too weird and technical, and yet are promoting Pixelfed. Not complaining, but it is funny.
Good point but I will say even with immutable distros users are given a lot more control than Windows or Mac.