[anigbrowl]

I do, though not too intensively. You are right about the difficulty of the economic problem, but I remember spending lots of time setting up a new thing called Linux to operate a small relay over dial-up when most people were using proprietary systems like Compuserve, so it's OK that the new technology is kind of slow or difficult. The important thing (IMHO) is that it be comprehensible and consistent, because it's easier to build the user interface and speed it up once it's already working.

[dotsh]

Yes, but so called "social media" isn't about installing anything to operate with. Twitter blow up the scene because it was super easy to start with and start sharing short sentences. In Mastadon you need to find a proper community, signup and start reading, but there is not interesting content there, no celebrities, no NASA, no Musk, no news magazines there is nothing that attracts typical users. But this is just my opinion. Until someone figure out a way to make Mastodon a one network to rule them all nothing will change.

[anigbrowl]

TWitter was doing something new and still had to work to get it's early users on. You need a different strategy in a mature market.

[dotsh]

Of course but imo it's not good strategy when you are dividing into hundreds of instances with 500+ users.