I really appreciate you putting this out there. Doubly so with the respectful treatment of it. And for the record my take is very similar to Moxies. But, many comments so far have attempted to refute your critique, fundamentally, on a point of scale (i.e. 100% of Mastadon is a rounding error to overall messaging traffic, so the percent that run servers is doubly irrelevant).
From a VC backed point-of-view that is a legitimate point of push back at this stage. From a technology leader point of view, it is not, exactly. Early adopters have _something_ to adopt early, because of these fringe groups. This is where creativity starts and eventually meets engineering and productization. Some things do shake out to 90/9/1 for _all_ internet traffic in a certain category. Some don't. I think pressures also ebb and flow. I remeber when Googles moniker of "don't be evil" wasn't an ironic, bitter joke.
From a VC backed point-of-view that is a legitimate point of push back at this stage. From a technology leader point of view, it is not, exactly. Early adopters have _something_ to adopt early, because of these fringe groups. This is where creativity starts and eventually meets engineering and productization. Some things do shake out to 90/9/1 for _all_ internet traffic in a certain category. Some don't. I think pressures also ebb and flow. I remeber when Googles moniker of "don't be evil" wasn't an ironic, bitter joke.