As dishwasher and lavatory attendant I do dirty work, not coding. So I did not watch hotmail, gmail, etc.

I used "federated silo" in the sense of "silo on the fediverse". That there may be other silos using distributed networks is beside the point. It's about this network, the #fediverse, with its thorough propaganda ¹ of "open / free / community" that got subdued by various activities, including design decisions by the leader of the Mastodon network.

¹ See as recent example https://gnusocial.net/conversation/7517599#notice-13138118 and my reply to its author: https://gnusocial.net/conversation/7517599#notice-13146139