I would much rather more people enjoy it than us just keeping it to ourselves. I believe, if done properly, it has a decent amount to offer for the average user. The fediverse has the major advantage of being decentralized and open source, and I believe that should be accessible to everyone, not just the fanatics (like me, admittedly) who are ready to wade knee deep through technical details and differences in communities, some of them quite toxic.

But OK "we'll just keep it as is", we keep the fediverse for us. Yay?

Here's the problem with that: it then remains a niche. What happens to niches in technology? Well, there are a number of examples that I specifically would like the Fediverse not to follow.

Carrying around a replacement battery was never something most people did. They didn't generally replace their batteries, either. That was a niche thing. At some point, manufacturers started sealing their phones shut. After all, it was only a niche that needed replaceable batteries, so it didn't affect many people. So we lost a part of our right to repair.

Rooting your phone was never something a majority of people did. Look what is happening to people who root their phones (read: want admin rights on devices they bought and fucking paid for): they lose their warranties, they lose their ability to use banking apps without complex workarounds that don't always work, in some cases their hardware doesn't work properly. Because rooting is seen as a niche thing, "it doesn't affect that many people, so no need to worry". So we lost those rights. And we're about to lose the right to install whatever apps we fucking chose.

What's on the horizon? Age restrictions. Something major platforms may whine about a bit, but can implement just fine - they already don't really care about your privacy anyway, and if there are fines, generally they're small enough to just be a line item. The smaller platforms? The operators of lemmy.world? The operator of kbin.earth, my home instance? I highly doubt that they have anywhere near what's needed for that. But the fediverse is only a niche thing, so it doesn't affect that many people. Oh, shit, that's us now.