I don’t like the clickbait title at all – Mastodon’s clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it outlives Xitter.
Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn’t stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.
Specifically Lemmy is exactly the same — a direct namedrop in tribute of a known musician or band. It’s really no weirder than a band naming itself after archduke Franz Ferdinand, or after Nikolai Gogol 🤷