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Mastodon is not based on GNU Social in any way other than they both used the OStatus protocol. Before ActivityPub became the norm.

GNU Social is made in PHP and Mastodon is made with Ruby and NodeJS. So two wildly different implementations.

Mastodon also looked more modern and followed more so called modern developing practices. Which is why I think it caught on more than GNU Social ever did.

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The kindness, quality, and eagerness to help is a big part of what propelled Mastodon. You'd log in, make your first toot, and have a pile of people welcoming you from the federated or local timeline. Same with beginner questions.

I tried GNU Social a long time ago, but it was mostly technical people talking about technical stuff. Great if that's what you're into, but it's no basis for a general use social network. Niche networks are fine, but I don't get the impression that's what early federated social media proponents wanted.

Even so, it is still weird to pretend that everything in the Fediverse is Mastodon.

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