Can you be more specific? Only thing I found missing was "Quote Posts" and almost everyone seems to agree that it was the right decision to make.
> will prevent Mastodon from ever growing beyond a small niche
And its not a good thing? "There's an instance for everything" is fast becoming an reality, Let those instances be small as its managed by volunteers;
There's no need for everything to grow into a democracy destroying scale, Especially Social Media platforms.
Some might just want to have a social interaction with like minded people, I'm one of them and Mastodon has been perfect for it.
I have a 14 year old Twitter account, Apart from the first few years when Twitter was actually like Mastodon with friends fooling around I never felt happy browsing Twitter; It has become an algorithm enforced narcissism universe with everyone trying to sell something or themselves.
I've been interacting with only couple of people whom I follow and vice versa for past several months I've been on Mastodon and I feel great about it. I'm convinced that federated instances are the solution to the social media problems just by strong focus on the theme and inherent limit to scaling without any pressure from VCs.
P.S. Please consider donating to your Mastodon instance.