And I'm convinced that Mastodon does not need to be a Twitter replacement to be a success. That is an important distinction that we should concede. It just needs to be a vibrant network that lots of people like using to succeed.
This is an issue that neither a centralized service nor a pure p2p service has (e.g. Patchbay/SSB).
This might be an example of the Vote phenomena where only people quite unhappy with the previous big place leave, which means the new place will end up with a very big skew...
Another good one seems to be https://sciences.social/public/local
And, honestly, if you look at the "anti-musk" "left-wing" journalists who are on there. All they seem to do is complain that it's not twitter and demand changes to accommodate them and their ilk better.
I think they just want to be intellectuals in John Mastodons court, where they feel they have access to power and can enjoy it vicariously. Then they can tell us breathlessly about how John is going to revolutionise the world and "make it a better place" all over again.
I'm not surprised an app with no profit motive behind it doesn't focus on this kind of work. It's very hard to motivate yourself to do it if it's not your job.
One could argue that pre-2010 Twitter itself is proof that not having the slickest onboarding path is not something that will prevent success. Onboarding can be improved and reinforced over time. Infrastructure is much more complex and building it first prevents a fake-it-until-you-make-it mindset.