Agreed, in theory all participants are equal and being banned by one participant shouldn't lock you out of a decentralized network.

In practice, the vast majority of handles (98.9% as of 2024) are under bsky.social [1]. Yes, alternative PDS providers exist, but if the default onboarding funnels everyone into one provider, and the average user doesn't even know what a PDS is, then decentralization is an implementation detail, not a user-facing reality.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/html/2408.12449