We, the XMPP community, failed to capitalize on success by diversifying the network. It's our own fault not enough nodes were there.
Not wrong in theory, but in this case, ridiculous. Everyone and their dog was running an xmpp server, but most had like 1 or 5 people.
You simply can't make a node to compete with the likes of Google or Meta, unless you're one of those companies.
All these posts about the huge growth rate of Mastodon and Lemmy are just funny in comparison with Threads. I hear Threads has something like 13 million users in a day or something?
The only times when a free and open concept wins, is if a) the closed-source behemoth royally fucks up so much that it's obvious (like IE vs. Firefox), b) if a decently sized company appropriates it (like all the Linux servers, and possibly Steamdeck), or c) it gets a huge head start, and there isnt enough market to choke it to death (like Audacity)
Any other time, a corporation with enough money is gonna try EEE, and probably succeed. (Even Firefox isn't doing so well since Chrome exists.)
If you want another example, look at Android. Oh look, open source, Linux based, so nice! We can do forks and ROMs and do anything with our phones!
Well with most phones you can't do shit, at least not easily, and now even the fucking dialer app isn't officially maintained anymore.
You can't compete with a trillion $ behemoth if it decides to smother you. Don't even start playing with it.