...which is exactly what one should expect something called "GNU Social" to be.

(not actually the op)

I agree. I say that a someone who doesn't tend to support popularity contests as a solution to everything. For example, privacy, buying local, supporting SMBs, thinking critically, and many more are hard, in different ways but those albeit important are not easy to do. Many people would say "make privacy easy!", OK we've got Signal, Tails, Tor, etc. "Make supporting SMBs more appealing!", OK we've got Shopify, Stripe Etsy, Gumroad etc. "Make thinking critically easier!!!" ... Wait a second, thinking critically is and will be hard, perhaps not hard but at least not easy.

GNU Social was called StatusNet and Laconica before that, but no, they still chose a deliberately uncool name in one of the most extreme popularity-driven markets. Not that we ought to drop our standards, but why choose such a petty hill to die on?