It’s sad to see someone who seems to want to do the right thing this bad fall victim to some kind of savior complex where they completely fail to empathize with the people they want to save.

if i understood his long, rambly posts about it, he might have wanted to save the fediverse, but he didn’t do it for us.

he did it for the “normies” who would otherwise be filtered out by “malcontents” and toxic content; for those used to (relatively) comfier social media platforms.

i think fundamentally, though, it’s better for fewer newbies to engage with the fediverse (and for some to turn back) than to have the masses use this place the same as any other social media, with a curated feed where nothing too wrong or uncomfortable ever pops up. i don’t think we really want that audience, anyway.

i wonder if things would be different if he started with that attitude.