Mastodon's biggest competitor is not Twitter. It's Reuters. It's the AP. It's Google.
The thing Twitter was able to deliver to the end user wasn't text based chat with other users. It's faster access to live, breaking news events that were unfolding as they happen. There's a reason the word "livetweeting" became more or less a part of everyone's basic lingo.
If Mastodon wants to become a leader in this industry, it needs to stop being reactive to everything Elon Musk says or does, and instead improve ways to access live, breaking news stories from around the world.