One of the things I’ve actually appreciated about Mastodon instances is that they’ve kept me more engaged. That’s because on Mastodon, you’re not limited to only seeing the posts of folks you follow or that those folks want you to see. You can easily see feeds of the posts of everyone on your instance, posts from the folks they follow and folks on other instances. Twitter initially offered a feed of all users on its service - it’s similar to that. So I’m exposed to ideas I don’t get on other services. That said, Mastodon’s 8M users are still largely early adopters - technologists, scientists, artists, activists, educators and journalists - as the post notes. That’s not everybody’s community. If they’re going to keep growing, Mastodon instances will need to attract folks from other communities - and that, in part, means addressing the perception that Mastodon is difficult to join and understand.