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It’s a bit of a cliché comment on HN but does mastodon/bluesky/etc have to be as big as twitter? There doesn’t have to be one conquering platform/protocol to rule all.

> Bluesky: “If you liked Twitter, you’ll love Bluesky.”

> Mastodon: “If you hated Twitter, you’ll like Mastodon.”

That actually sounds like a good niche for each of them.

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It doesn't, at all. I'm not sure why Gruber is hung up on seeing Mastodon as a monolith that intends to replace Twitter.

The whole point of federation is to not be a monolith where one change in the rules affects everyone in the network.

Gruber thinks in terms of brands. Apple is a brand. Reddit is a brand. Twitter is a brand. It's easy to pick winners and losers with brands.

Mastodon isn't a brand so much as it's a grouping of a bunch of different brands (servers). In a way Mastodon can't win or lose because of this. If you have 10 people on a server and they're happy- you've won.

Gruber has a hard time wrapping his head around this, partially because it's just not his thing.

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