the framing of mastodon having attrition problems bafflingly misses what's interesting here
mastodon's new user retention rate being as high as it is, despite there being no UX team designing shady psychological tricks into the service/apps to keep you coming back, is a pretty big deal
like, let's be honest, there's very little about mastodon that's making us want to return here compulsively or addictively the way so many for-profit services implicitly aim for
it's pretty much just the people
I find being on this platform very relaxing, the opposite of twitter. I spend less time on here, but enjoy it far more.
It actually doesn't matter how many people are joining or leaving various instances, because it's not run for profit, no one's getting fat off trying to get you to stay.
Our society has so few ways of measuring success, other than wealth/greed or status/power, so I suspect that this is what is happening in the media, simply put, they just don't understand what is happening unless it's in terms of something/someone beating someone/something else, or someone getting rich off the backs of exploiting others.
Sad, but this is the world we live in.
Ali Alkhatib
JudeNunga