That's a nice idea but has some pretty obvious technical drawbacks that aren't discussed in the blog article:
The complexity of most networks grows about exponentially with the number of connections between the entities. It gets immensely more computationally expensive that way and you're bound to use lots of additional network traffic and total cpu power that way.
And some (a lot of) people like using social media on their phones instead of a computer. You're bound to drain their batteries real fast by moving application logic there.
Other than that I like the general idea. The Fediverse should be more dynamic. Caching and discovery have some big issues in the current form. That should be tackled and we need technical solutions for that. And the current architecture isn't perfect at all.
Furthermore, if talking about the edge where networks are smarter... Why then move it into the browser which isn't at the edge? Wouldn't that be an argument to invent edge-routers like in edge computing? I mean with c2s you have a server on the one side and a client on the other side with the edge somewhere in between. If you now flip it you end up in a different situation. But there's still nothing at the edge where you could introduce some smarts...
Well, the obvious answer to nearly all those broad questions is: "It depends..."
But I mean what "work" and "effort"? I mean using Matrix isn't exactly hard... You need to install an App, register for an account, think of a password and log in... That's pretty much the same complexity as with Facebook or Discord?!
Surely issueing big tech companies a blank cheque for your life is easy. And you get free services in return. But I don't think using privacy respecting services and even Linux to do your office stuff is substancially more difficult than giving away all your data.