Yes, people chase content, which means chasing where many people are, but why did Bluesky become a mainstream alternative and Mastodon didn’t?
I’m saying marketing doesn’t cut it, and it’s not just about where most users are either, otherwise everyone but Threads would be irrelevant.
People bounce off both Threads and Mastodon, and there are platform-related reasons for that.
Discoverability is a huge barrier to entry in the Fediverse, and they’re not helping.
It’s hard for me to judge them too harshly, though. Fediverse devs do things I disagree with all the time, and users too. Maybe, in a different world, something else could’ve taken Mastodon’s place… but its forks stick close, Pleroma has the charm of a brick, Misskey is too 日本, and Misskey forks got Messy, and—
…Oh. That’s it, isn’t it? Mastodon is the best that ActivityPub has to offer most microblogging fans.