Iran probably wants this, because they can say “look, the West cares more about money from shipping, than it does about the lives of human beings in Gaza”.
I think it would be pretty difficult for Lemmy/Mastodon/Kbin to become bigger than for-profit counterparts. For-profit businesses can raise loads of funding and spend all that money on lots of engineers to refine their platforms.
But I do think the fediverse is pushing big tech to alter their platforms. E.g. Meta planning to support ActivityPub in Threads.
It’s great until the cow gets bored and walks off.