I don’t like the clickbait title at all – Mastodon’s clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn’t stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
TL;DR
Federation is not something familiar or comfortable for an average normal person
Until you explain email is federation.
In the imaginary world where Gmail required you to visit Outlook to view the entire thread because it hadn’t synced yet, yeah sure they’re exactly the same. In the real world the email comparison stops being useful beyond explaining how @ monikers work.
I don’t think I’ve had that problem?
@chottomatte federation should be an as invisible as impossible for the fediverse to be mainstream imo