Mastodon does not need to scale well. Even if the userbase shrinks to what it was before the Big Twitter Exodus (or whatever you want to call it) of last year, it will be perfectly alright.

Mastodon was fun and enjoyable before. It does not need more users to remain so.

It’s very similar to how Twitter felt in its early years. You had to know exactly what you wanted to see (topics, people), otherwise you’d feel lost.

My family has been using Synapse since before Covid hit, including TURN server (coturn) for audio and video calls. No complaints about the UI so far, except for Element on iPhone reportedly “freezing” for a few moments when sending messages - and that was over a year ago.

What problems do you have getting TURN to work?

“Multimillion-dollar fines” is just another term for “pocket change” in this context. Pump those numbers up!

I’m not that optimistic. I think MANY people are fed up with this particular case of a centralized site being annoying, but do not really care about anything other than getting their dopamine fix, and will happily jump into sack with next big social media site, centralized or not. Most people just don’t care.