I don’t like the clickbait title at all – Mastodon’s clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn’t stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
When you say “people…”, assume that most use the native app.
Regular people likely care more about being able to follow who they follow than ads, which they are more likely to put up with even for basic browsing. Last bit was just how I use it.
I’m just saying, that they are really, really inefficient as RSS for everyday people since the are more posts you didn’t subscribe to, than the ones you subscribed to.
Hence saying that it’s what people use them for IMO , genedally, is incorrect.