@atomicpoet Of course it "deserves" to survive. What kind of question is that--what does "deserve" to survive even mean, and who decides that? It will survive because people will use it. But my prediction is that it won't be at all like you think.

Most people on the big platforms (Twitter, FB/Meta) *like* their walled garden ecosystem and the way it works (or used to until EM messed with it). They *want* the broadcaster/consumer model, where they can scroll through news feeds and big influencers' hot takes for them to react to, and may hope to become an influencer themselves (big dopamine).

Of the people who've come to Mastodon, some like it and will stay (the ones who prefer this type of platform but just didn't know it existed or hadn't been driven to try it before), but most of them are just waiting for the next big player to come in as a drop-in replacement for Twitter. They're just hanging out here and a couple other places until they can get on another giant walled garden that's without the problems that drove them from Twitter.

When that happens, whether it's Meta or Google or whatever, those people will flock to it and it will take control by sheer force of numbers. Using an AP-like protocol (which they will of course extensively modify for their own purposes) and calling the platform "decentralized" will mean very little with their massive billion+ user instance as the dominant force on it.

Existing Mastodon instances will decide whether to join with that or defederate from it. People will choose their side and change instances as necessary, and it will all settle out to pretty much how things were before, with a small (though certainly bigger than before) fediverse and the giant walled garden that replaces Twitter.