Matrix is also federated… having your own protocol is not related to the concept of federation, which is simply the property of having the ability to run your own servers and join a network of other servers which share a protocol.

It is federated, but I forgot it wasn’t activitypub.

What about twitters project?

Doesn’t mean your not in the US, sorry just was unclear

What city do you live in? Do you ever travel interstate in the US? I don’t know many US cities that have adequate enough public transit to really thrive without a drivers license, but if you were living out of country or specifically NYC then no duh, I wouldn’t drive either.