@GossiTheDog Posts (blue) and new account (green) on mastodon.social show real growth over the last few months.
There are some local initiatives that are really effective, for example in France @HelloQuitteX got some national press coverage, and I see a lot of new french users introducing themselves. French instances also report never seen before user growth, with whole communities (writers, artists…) joining and supporting each other to rebuild their communities