I'm bullish on it because it's not subject to the whims of any one player, and the Fediverse is also not just Mastodon, but also Misskey, Calkey, Akkoma, Lemmy, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Peertube and many more, all of which can interoperate. And eventually Threads too if they follow through.

It's a long game of wanting an entirely different model where the threshold to try new things is far lower because you can tap into an existing network from day one.

But Mastodon in itself is valuable to me already today. If it keeps growing, great, but I'll be there even if it doesn't. It's taken over the place from Twitter for me as the one social media site I keep permanently open on a separate virtual desktop. I check Twitter less and less.