I remember reading a book that talked about public spaces and how we often think of malls as public spaces, but they have so many restrictions and ulterior motives that it doesn't really hold.
They're essentially the irl equivalent of centralised social media platforms. I hope once the fediverse really takes off, we can have 'official' platforms/instances that are run by governments that federate only to other 'official' ones. That seems like a better way to reach people, instead of Xitter.