You’ll note that all of the discourse around Mastodon and Fediverse adoption now is about it “challenging” or “taking over” from Twitter.
This is yet another instance of pop culture taking over the discourse. Pop culture has to have a winner. It’s always a competition. Improvement or serving the end user is always secondary to winning out in a popularity contest.
Be extremely skeptical of any advice that is framed by the pop culture leaderboard. It’s likely to be toxic in the long run.
The fediverse doesn’t need to win over anything else. It does not need to challenge, threaten, or dominate any other community or service. All it needs to do is serve its existing members and be a good place for new people to join. Becoming a safer space is much more likely to contribute to its longevity than ‘winning’ mass adoption from ex-Twitter users in the short term.
"The fediverse needs critical mass to survive!"
I've been here since 2017. Sometimes it's been a quiet place. Sometimes it's fast-paced. But it's had enough critical mass for survival for a long while.
Now what it needs it to become a _better_ place, not bigger.
Safer, nicer, friendlier, more welcoming to those at risk. A hasty push for more "critical mass" is likely to make these communities more aggressive, less forgiving, and less sustainable in the long term.
