I would've thought that Twitter shutting down access to third-party apps would've caused another exodus. It's caused nary a blip of new Mastodon accounts, so if they're going anywhere, it's not here. I'm also not hearing about anything else, so I guess people really are going down with the ship.
Remember when #Facebook really reigned in access by third parties? It didn't lose the platform all that much with the general public, and MAY have even made it more popular since some of those third party applications weren't exactly top-notch.
I don't think the general public really knows or cares about third party apps.
And of course there are times when different groups take advantage of that lack of knowledge to sow confusion and promote their stories.
