a certain instance can, but that won't affect the network as a whole that much. you hop over to another instance and done. the developers also could, but it's open source, it can be forked by dedicated server operators. It's also developed by a nonprofit, so there's not abig risk, and thry have a good track record.

It's a federated network of open source servers, anybody can host it. So, I think we are pretty safe. For now.