“Less efficient” is quite a misnomer here, since the meshtastic network mainly has to work around the regulations, which leaves it only small timeframes for transmitting. When such a project can only transmit for a few minutes per hour, then naturally it has way less bandwidth overall

Who should have authority is a really subjective topic. You cannot find a matric, that will fit the definitions of the complete fediverse. So the current solution basically is ditching the vetting process (as it is subjective) and give everyone the possibility to build their community (or instance) with their own rules, admins and moderators. Then the users can choose where to go.

Is that perfect? No. It just solves the problem of moderation (which is necessary to avoid the worst behavior of human kind) differently than mainstream social media, by creating niches for everyone, which can be isolated by blocking and defederating.

Of course you can build your own instance and set the rule, than anyone, who wants to moderate, has to provide proof of corresponding education for the community. Maybe that works, though I doubt it.

The important part where this scheme came from:

According to Tex Texin, the first numeronym of this kind was “S12n”, the electronic mail account name given to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) employee Jan Scherpenhuizen by a system administrator because his surname was too long to be an account name. The use of such numeronyms became part of DEC corporate culture.[3]

So it was a technical limitation gotten corporate naming scheme.