A messaging protocol or platform like Email or XMPP or Signal is only useful if the people you want to converse with are on it. There's no other reason to use it. This means you probably need to have some of the people you know personally on it before you want to use it.

However the two main types of ActivityPub apps are microblogging and link sharing. I don't necessarily need to know anyone on Fedi to enjoy using these platforms. So the likelihood for these platforms to thrive and survive, and the resilience against them being killed by a single large actor defederating or shutting down is much higher.

[–] jocanib 5 points 1 year ago

I don’t necessarily need to know anyone on Fedi to enjoy using these platforms.

That depends what you use it for.

On Twitter I followed a lot of specialists in my field. On Reddit there were a lot of (anonymous) specialists in my field. Both were an important part of my working life, and it took two networks totalling ~half a billion people to deliver those few hundred people who made it so useful for me.

And that was also true for my niche hobbies and my niche leisure reading.

Small networks work well for some things. But not all things.