It does really, and that's why it doesn't work as well in this current environment. Mastadon is a DIY app/platform, which constitutes one of any number of impl

It does really, and that's why it doesn't work as well in this current environment. Mastadon is a DIY app/platform, which constitutes one of any number of implementations of ActivityPub, which is the underlying protocol, and can speak to any of the other implementations without limitation, save those imposed by the protocol and self-imposed by the two implementations currently speaking to each other. There are multiple types of SMTP/POP/IMAP servers out there, but they all implement the same protocols, which means that my email client can reach your email client no matter what our clients, or the servers we connect to, look like. This is how the internet works; platforms will always be a limited subset of this fundamental reality. It's also how ActivityPub works, you can wrap whatever user interface you want around it, Mastadon or otherwise, but the protocol, not the platform, defines what is and is not an ActivityPub packet. Platforms, FB, Twitter, Tiktok, Insta, none of these work this way, they are closed platforms that you enter through secure gates and must play according to their rules, and they will always decide who gets amplification and who does not based on what makes them money, and good luck taking anything back out to the open internet with you, even if it's 100% your work. If you put it there, don't expect to get it back easily, and forget about control. It is a fundamentally hostile user relationship that cannot be improved without removing the profit motive. There have been other recent posts on HN about User Hostile software design. It's a thing and it's a bad thing. Mastadon is... tofu dogs. Mastadon is an attempt to feed healthy, protocol-based internet food to people who have been subsisting on bad, algorithmically-manipulated corporate internet food (the aforementioned user-hostile platforms) in a way that feels familiar to them while they get used to the idea of not consuming the internet equivalent of Twinkies and Pork Rinds and Liquor for the rest of their lives. It doesn't taste as good as Twitter, sure. Maybe that's not the most important thing.