Problem: Who is Mastodon for, and what is the goal of Mastodon?
From my perspective, the issue is that Eugen made something, a certain community and culture ended up forming (not Eugen’s goal, but it is what it is), and now that a different community and culture is starting to take notice, the old community and culture wants to preserve what it always was.
However, I think Eugen wants Mastodon to be for everyone, and Mastodon doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so sometimes you do have to override the opinions of those who are already there. You’re hearing the voices of those already there directly, but you’re not hearing the voices of the people who aren’t there. (and in my opinion, they should be on Mastodon / Fediverse, we’re all aware of why centralised social media is bad)
There’s a lot of opinions and views on Mastodon, and while “the users” are important, if Eugen wants Mastodon to have reach, sometimes he has to do different things. An example write-up of why Eugen could be making the decisions he is currently can be seen in this blog post: https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
And lastly, my final point: Whatever Mastodon itself becomes, users and administrators are still in control, so does this really matter? With the code being open source, with the ability to federate and defederate freely, ability to turn off features easily with toggles and options, Mastodon is not being compromised. The question comes down to what the default experience should be, and the Fediverse gives people control to still keep the community and culture they want, just somewhere else.
Yes, because I want my friends (who aren’t tech orientated) and interest groups (which aren’t tech orientated) to be on the Fediverse.
They’re always complaining about this, that, and the other about the big platforms but they have so many hang ups regarding Fedi software, so they don’t use them.
A lot of it is perception, but you have to try and make it so people don’t have those perceptions or break them.