You are 100% correct.

Ordinary users don't care about decentralization in social networks like ordinary people don't care about seismic codes for buildings. Decentralization is about avoiding the once-in-a-decade disaster that can ruin a service, not about making it nicer the day you sign up.

I don’t think people would articulate it as wanting decentralization, but there are absolutely values of alternate models that are broadly appealing to far more than 1% of users. Every single business user likes their email list better than their social followers.