You say that like I don't want to federate with twitter, and then choose who I block.

Because let's face it, 95% of the profiles ARE on twitter. Not everybody who uses social media gives one shit about open source. I'd say most on mastodon DO, but I'd say the vast majority on bluesky DON'T.

This will help you understand why bluesky has 24.5 active million users, and mastodon has 1.5 million active users.

Twitters new reputation is a rightwing hellhole. THAT'S why they're bleeding users. Bluesky is exactly like twitter in functionality, but left wing leaning.

Mastodon isn't political by nature, but functions very differently. The people who care about open source, and decentralized, and all these other things, those people signed up for mastodon. Everybody else who didn't care, didn't.

Now to be fair, mastodon has 10 million registered users, but only 1.5 active users. Compare that to blueskys 25 million users, with 24.5 active users.

Given mastodon's older age compared to bluesky, it suggests to me that at some point in the past, people signed up for mastodon as an alternative to twitter.....and by large have left the platform.

My speculation is that it probably happened when must bought twitter 2 years ago. Before bluesky became popular. Then they left when they realized mastodon works differently than twitter.