AOL also charged you $15 a month for an email subdomain, whereas on Mastodon that kind of lock-in wouldn't exist. Creating an AOL-like company for Mastodon doesn't work unless your ultimate goal is to be blocked by every major federated community.
Sure. AOL was also a commercial service and joining Mastodon.social is free. A facade over the Internet would look different than a facade over a federated social network in many ways.
