If you're powerful enough to have a lawyer for such things, then I guess that's a significant difference. But for most of us, your description of the alternative is indeed tantamount to "some random person hosting a random server". And you're right that federated designs are susceptible to bad behavior on the part of the server admin. I assume that's why the radicle protocol guide (https://docs.radicle.xyz/guides/protocol) has a section differentiating P2P from federated.

I don't know these people, maybe they are indeed up to something nefarious, but their design is inherently more trustworthy than federated or hosted solutions. If I must chose between transparency into finances and a nonhierarchical design which presents no high value targets for corruption to focus on, I'll take the better design over the financial transparency every time.

If they turn out to be actually shady I can just configure my node not to talk to them or their friends and keep on using it, which is a lot more than can be said for most of the alternatives.

Besides, it's a publishing platform. What is this "your data" you're talking about? The whole point is to spread it far and wide and to collect contributions from far and wide.