To be fair, and as the article acknowledges, #Mastodon *is* harder to use than #Twitter or #Facebook. A lot of the difficulty is in deciding where to get started, the paralysis of choice, and that can leave a bad taste in your mouth which affects the whole experience. First impressions matter.
But it isn't *that* much harder, and there's real value in choice too. More to the point—again as the article says—there's value in, well, values. Nobody's getting rich off Mastodon. It exists because people think something like it would be neat to have, and they want to share that neatness with others who think the same. There are egos involved to be sure, but no one person's ego can bring it all crashing down.
As a practical matter, it is AFAICT the first and only open-source, distributed, not-for-profit social media platform that registers as a threat to the big players. That counts for a lot in my book.
Remember when the internet felt promising instead of overwhelming, depressing, and sometimes terrifying? Mastodon's bringing some of that back, at least for me.
@TwShiloh I admit it, I'm lazy: I want everyone who thinks I post things worth reading on Facebook, Quora, and (to the degree anyone cares) Twitter to follow me over here en masse. 😀 But I know it's not going to happen automagically.
@medigoth I agree. I like it here, and I really like my server. It's been years since I've seen and had good conversations online without trolling and insults.
It's not really hard to use, IMO. Just a little bit of a learning curve, and trying to find a server. That's it.
@medigoth I know this isn't everyone's opinion at all, but I find it fun/challenging to see if I can rebuild an audience here. It makes me have to take a step back and rethink who my audience might be and how to tailor content for them.