But if you get the framing from the terrible prototype/draft, it can lead you into a bad direction. It is like the “Don’t think of an Elephant”. Once you see the “Elephant” you will struggle not to make something that looks more like an Elephant.

Working from scratch is better than a terrible frame.

Edit: I see the problem, even with a self-hosted instance of 1, when you comment on posts in other instances that data is no longer held on your server, so you don’t own it and can’t control it directly, is that right?

The “problem” is also going the other way around. If a large instance is sharing data with your single user instance, they ultimately cannot control what you do with it.

The same is true if you just scrape the website.