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Mastodon is in trouble if it still has a communication problem in late-2022. It's had 6 years to refine its experience, and apparently is still unable to capitalize on Twitter's missteps.

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I don't know how 30% overnight growth means it is in trouble. I don't know how a service that isn't geared toward profit is in trouble from a lot more people using it and learning about it. I really, honestly don't know what you mean by that.

Basically, Mastodon still can't explain in layman's terms how users should think about its federated model, or why they should care. This 30% bump is driven entirely by short-term drama around Twitter. I bet you that in the next few months, you will see Mastodon's DAU's drop back to around what it was before this whole mess.

The biggest reason for this is that, as you yourself said, Twitter's UX is terrible but Mastodon is almost identical. So why switch?

Thankfully laypeople will always continually excel beyond your professional opinion that they can't understand how to log into one of several websites.

Again, why should users switch to Mastodon if the UI is identical? You made some good points about Twitter's UX being terrible due to their focus on advertisers, but it looks like Mastodon is literally trying to be a Twitter knock-off. What's the benefit?

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