Fediverse

Because they'd heard of them.

The power of the fediverse is nothing next to the power of the normieverse and a couple of billion dollars in advertising money.

I found it tiresomely political and strangely dogmatic way too much of the time. I didn’t get the impression that there was a wide cross-section of people on there.

Maybe it is just avoiding big tech.

the later those outlook, iphone and windows11 using ppl find a good home in a more guarded environment. makes fediverse a place that can grow. it is not mature yet as we all can see when looking at defederation drama. in the end you will be able to choose between the fully federated network or a "super" app like weechat.

@dch82 mastodon can't go mainstream because its emphasis on decentralization is too prominent in its communication, which complicates its adoption

However, modern social networks can still stand out, provided that federation is natural and not explicitly mentioned—similar to how Threads operates currently

Fediverse sounds too much like metaverse so people assume it’s crypto bullshit

People dumb.

"Everyone"? I know exactly zero people that have admitted to having a Bluesky account, but I know plenty that have an Mastodon etc. one.

I think this is at most a very regional or specific user bubble thing, and official user numbers for these commercial services are never trustworthy.