The years Mastodon operated before Musk chased millions of people off Twitter don't count. In the status quo ante of Musk's takeover, Mastodon may never have been viable, but Musk did take over Twitter.
Anecdotally, I've enjoyed Twitter a lot more since his takeover. They've relaxed their rules and unbanned a lot of people who I'd missed seeing on the platform. Musk does seem to be at least partially keeping his promise of improving the free speech aspect of the site.
Hello brand new account, do you work for Twitter? If not, how do you know?
In another comment you ask to see Mastodon's active user count. Where's Twitter's? Personally I'd love to see a line chart of Twitter's DAU for the past six months. Like way more than I'm interested in Mastodon's.
I'm sure you know those previous years of operation does certainly count. Mastodon launched in 2016 (7 years ago). Not in November 2022.