and Mastodon/Bluesky don’t have their own flavors of each, except in a form that prevents any contrary (or factual) word from piercing the filter bubble?
But my point is not about protocol wars or disputing that fediverse platforms are "good enough" for a small number of niche users, predominantly techies. The challenge is to take the fediverse mainstream. When somebody is building a "Tiktok competitor" this is clearly what they have in mind.
"niche" and "mainstream" are moving targets, but from what I've observed, plenty of non-techie people are already on the fediverse. Even if you don't consider that mainstream, adoption is clearly moving in that direction. And even if the fediverse never becomes "mainstream" (centralization may simply always be the most popular model because of lower friction and convenience) that's still OK.
I liken the Fediverse to the old internet, where you had personal sites and blogs and forums. Many of those never had millions of views or millions of users and they did fine. The draw of the Fediverse is opting out of the commercial surveillance and exploitation driven web ecosystem and every "x for fediverse" alternative makes it look more attractive.
Mastodon isn't trying to replace any incumbent properties. The concept doesn't even make sense for a federated network. Not everything is a zero sum game of capitalist growth and competition, and there are valid definitions of success which do not require Mastodon completely subsume Twitter. I think it's OK to simply be an alternative.
You seem to have missed the point that the OP is about a newly launched fediverse TikTok competitor [1], not Mastodon. I am not sure the people building Loops want it to be "small and unpopular". You are also confusing server size with the overall adoption of these platforms.
I am trying to tell you that the broader movement for (re)decentralization is stalling and that is (in part) because it too closely emulates the successes of centralized adtech media.
