Yep, network effects are hard to beat. Unless a Mastodon-esque platform is not largely a copy for existing services but rather offers something substantially di

Yep, network effects are hard to beat. Unless a Mastodon-esque platform is not largely a copy for existing services but rather offers something substantially different and superior (ie, how Facebook overtook MySpace, or how TikTok grew exponentially), there is very little chance of these sorts of federated platforms becoming mainstream. Heck, I like Mastodon a lot too, but having tried I could not switch simply because the people I follow (the AI research community) is largely not present there.