Too late, at this point. Mastodon was never going to be the mainstream replacement, at least not anytime soon. Bluesky honestly took too long. Had it opened up first, people would have poured into it. But once they're settled in Threads, that's where they'll stay.

It is profoundly depressing to watch Musk crumble only for the internet to flock mindlessly back to Mark fucking Zuckerberg. Just when I was hopeful we might break away from these established giants...

Users aren't going to care about privacy until there are consequences. Given tendencies in red states in the US, I expect some people to be arrested based on social media data - not "here's a post of me breaking the law" kind of data, but "you browsed this site while posting this comment after seeing your doctor last Tuesday which is a strong indication you were trying to cause a miscarriage" kind of data.

Is it actually thriving? I haven’t downloaded it or made an account to check so I wouldn’t know, but I would’ve thought I’d have seen the content referenced from other places if this was the case… So far I think I’ve seen one Thread screenshotted and linked and it was Zuck’s demo one or something…

Well if you care about privacy, avoid all Meta products. Otherwise go ahead and use them. I thought it would be simple.

Me confused about who should be nuked