To be honest, Mastodon does have some UX issues that prevent it from being as popular as it could potentially become. The lack of the ability to import your existing contact list is the big one. Mastodon tries very hard to focus on finding new people with common interests, but that's a very much secondary activity on any social media platform. It's important, yes, but it's secondary. And emphasizing that "instance is a community" doesn't help this much either because people often have more than one area of interest.

I'm trying to fix these issues with my own fediverse project.

The problem is deeper than that. I tried to persuade someone here that mastodon had the potential to grow as quickly as Twitter. Their response was “we don’t want it to,” more or less.

And probably with good reason. Not everything needs to be the largest thing it can be. It’s why bean sprouts are different from oak trees, as someone once put it.

I have one friend who set up his own Mastodon server. Had some fun with it and seemingly forgot about it. The server is still running tho.

Some people just don't have the need for social media, they have enough life without it. That's fine. For most, though, having some form of social media presence is beneficial. And the platform on which they have that presence better not be based on the scourge that is the attention economy.

But your life won't be worse if you quit all social media.

My life would be endlessly boring if I quit all social media.

Read books. Literally a 10x improvement in entertainment and quality.

It doesn’t have to be.