The article is not decent because the premise "niche protocol is still niche after big player dumped using it" it's blatantly obvious. It's just another trite "X is dead, netcraft confirms it" juxtaposition of maybes and what ifs.
I'm pretty sure it's more: "growing niche protocol collapsed to near invisibility after big player reimplemented it, extended it, then broke compatibility"
If we're making up quotes, they might as well reflect the article.
What I'm saying is that hobbyists (like me) that develop fediverse software will probably be there _after_ meta gets bored and finds reasons to drop out, which is pretty much what happened to XMPP. And that it does not mean the death of anything.
At the same time, hobbyists that could be joining the network because of their initial ethos, would also refrain from joining given the blur and dilution of its values.