>Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them. Normal people don't like any kind of freedom of choi

>Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them. Normal people don't like any kind of freedom of choice really: they want everyone to own the exact same iPhone they have, they actively discourage everyone they know from getting anything other than an iPhone (even going so far as to refuse to communicate with them because their messages show up with a different-color dot), and then they have the audacity to whine and complain when Apple exercises its monopoly power and makes iPhones absurdly expensive and forces software updates on them which make their older iPhones slower. But they absolutely refuse to even consider trying anything besides an iPhone, no matter how much they feel screwed over by Apple. It's not just Apple and iPhones; I see this mentality all the time with many other things. We'll probably see the same thing with Twitter. Many people will whine and complain about the price increases, about Musk's new rules or who or what he allows on the platform, etc., but a large group of them will simply never leave Twitter no matter what, unless it finally goes the way of MySpace. >Between federation (yes, I know the benefits), resource issues, and simple UX issues I can’t imagine it taking off. >The UX and apps can be fixed, but by then its one chance may have passed and it may be too late. I haven't looked at Mastodon so I'm just taking your word for it, but federation would only be useful if it were mostly transparent and not a hassle as others have described here, and the other issues will probably prevent anyone from switching, just like desktop Linux basically missed its chances to get really big over the years because of too many small issues that drove people back to Windows/Mac. First-mover advantage is a huge thing and it's really hard to unseat an incumbent.