Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not super optimistic about the future of Friendica. I'm sure some parts of it are popping. But I'm not finding a lot of people who share my interests here. I cross-post to Bluesky and there are a lot more people interacting with my posts there. That is to say, I get a lot of "likes", which is actually a pretty uninteresting form of interaction in my book. I hope things improve. I'm going to persist with Friendica and Bluesky for a while because I am growing disenchanted with Facebook and Instagram.

@David Johnson This is the problem with the Fediverse or decentralized social network in general. They are almost just as capable _technically_ as the big sharks, but there's no 'commercial' or 'marketing' mindset to attract people.
I remember using Google Plus and LOVING it to the core, but because it was a desert that no one visited, it failed in a couple of years or so. Even Eric Schmidt then admitted after a few months that he wasn't using it any longer.
I strongly believe that's what's gonna happen here. I've been using decentralized social media for a while and now I fully understand why Elon Musk bought X for 44 Billion dollars instead of making a new social platform from scratch for much lower cost.

Zuck and Musk are killing social media, ironically destroying its value by attempting to maximize monetization. People are disenchanted. The social aspect is dying and it's becoming purely a medium for disseminating propaganda and advertising. Facebook, Instagram and X will lose people and they'll either 1. leave social media altogether, or 2. migrate to other platforms like Friendica. I hope the latter. I doubt that any "commercial" or "marketing" mindset is going to help to grow the Fediverse or Bluesky. They will need to go viral based on their own intrinsic value, the way MySpace and Facebook did in the beginning.