It's because it is dismal and Eugen is right as well and there is evidence supporting that [0] which it is still true to this day with the up-to-date instances that are active and with users who have logged in at least once over a week.

3,064,237 total registered Mastodon accounts and only 192,384 users using it. That is 7% of active users using the platform and 93% of everyone else not using it. There is virtually no one to talk to or interact with on the platform.

This is enough to tell us that Mastodon is indeed a failure and has not replaced Twitter after 6 years of marketing itself as a Twitter alternative.

[0] http://sp3r4z.fr/mastodon/accurate_user_count

Having a low active user count doesn’t mean there’s no one to interact with. I use it sometimes, I see lots of interaction. It’s not a success as a business (which it’s not necessarily trying to be) but that doesn’t mean it’s not a thing (a protocol) that many people are regularly using.

>This is enough to tell us that Mastodon is indeed a failure and has not replaced Twitter after 6 years of marketing itself as a Twitter alternative.

I think this is pretty obviously false. There are vibrant communities on Mastodon that left Twitter so they could exist in peace. Furry and furry friendly community, lgbtq+ webcomic artists, sex workers are a few off the top of my head that created their own communities.

And I would have thought this was self evident, but you can be an alternative and succeed as an alternative without it meaning you have to replace the original or absorb all the active users of the original.

Despite the name of your source, it seems to consider less than half of existing Mastodon servers. According to my own crawler, the up-to-date active user count is 540,258.

Do you think Twitter or Facebook is any better?

Yes? Facebook's MAU is almost half the world population. Hell, their daily active users is almost 2B.

Facebook claims 700+ million login daily but many are bots.

It doesn't matter because you are not talking or interacting with them. You have a small list and unless you explore groups.

Most of the world uses google search outside of China. I don't feel connected to them and if the volume dropped to a few hundred people using google search it wouldn't affect my experience.

Facebook isn't a community site it is a social media with expectations that you consume more content than you contribute.