@jacob I agree with most of this post, and at the same time take issue with it.

Masto/fedi has glaring issues, especially socially and culturally. We lost the trust of a lot of people, especially people of color, and we have a lot of learning to do about what happened there.

But to say that the whole thing "failed"? Come on. The fediverse is still a triumph. It's done better than almost every other attempt at creating a new social media network, commercial or otherwise, and with a fraction of the resources.

If the goal is to become as big as Twitter or Facebook then sure, we're not gonna get there. For most folks here (I think) that's not the goal at all. Has it reached enough critical mass to healthily sustain itself well into the future? Absolutely.

The UX needs to be better, and being decentralized makes that harder. And I agree that for most users decentralized in itself is not a selling point. But it's what will makes this place resilient over time. Blocking Meta's instance is absolutely rational for us who remember how Google reader killed RSS.

And the UX will get better. Contrary to the author's claims a lot of people do care about the beginner and general user experience.

In any case, a lot of justified criticism and food for thought.