Mastodon isn't "about the politics," though. It already existed when the diaspora from Twitter occurred, it wasn't created for that reason.
There's plenty of good "content" there - although calling it that feels too capitalist. People don't join Mastodon to create a product out of themselves to be consumed, as is the case on mainstream social media. That sort of influencer-based economy isn't feasible on Mastodon because it doesn't use algorithms which maximize controversy and addition over everything else. So it winds up feeling like an actual community of friends sharing common interests rather than a Skinner box optimized for endorphines.
I've never been a big fan of registered trademarks in open-source software. By definition, a registered trademark's use has to be limited.
I tried the site but the platform just doesn't have the juice. Too limiting and not enough network effect.
What a lot of these site owners fail to realize is that "I don't like X/Elon" isn't a very strong reason for creating content on their platform.
If one of them built a platform with better discovery/reach than X (or any other platform) I would join in a heartbeat.
The problem is that everyone is making the same mistake Elon is, making the platform about politics rather than making it about the content.
Mastodon isn't "about the politics," though. It already existed when the diaspora from Twitter occurred, it wasn't created for that reason.
There's plenty of good "content" there - although calling it that feels too capitalist. People don't join Mastodon to create a product out of themselves to be consumed, as is the case on mainstream social media. That sort of influencer-based economy isn't feasible on Mastodon because it doesn't use algorithms which maximize controversy and addition over everything else. So it winds up feeling like an actual community of friends sharing common interests rather than a Skinner box optimized for endorphines.
That is actually a pretty good encapsulation of why the vast majority of people, myself included, will never go within a galaxy of that website.
That's fine. The more people there are, the faster they ruin the experience for everyone else.
[2022]
Pull request to notify on setup (2 weeks old): https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/38548