Somehow, I feel like the federated network is still centralized, because there is still censorship; it's just distributed across more servers.
I mean, it definitely gives users more rights to free speech, and I'm not worried about privacy issues. However, the removal of content and the banning of accounts are things that are diminishing my passion for sharing my thoughts publicly(on reddit).
I just dont want this happened on here but I am seeing some...
I mean, they're practically interchangeable words. They mean fairly the same thing. Polycentric is decentralized. You can use that word if it works for you, but decentralized is still correct.
Then what would you call a network where specific data isn't tied to specific nodes and lost when the node goes down?
You are describing a decentralized system. But you aren't describing a required function of decentralization.