I say DON’T fork it. Heres the thing nobody in communities wants to come to grips with…security is not the way to grow a very new platform. “Normie” users will not give one shit if you are super secured with 87 point encrypted authentication. Super secure? Don’t mean shit.
You know what normie users DO care about? Marketing. They want one concise marketing vision. They want one baseball brand. One football brand. One basketball brand. One twitter. One facebook. One instagram.
Now. There are times that those dominant platforms can be disrupted. If oh…I don’t know…some dipshit decided to spend 44 BILLION dollars and spend the next 2 years changing it from the dominant name in microblogging, to a right wing facist supporting echochamber where differing ideas are stiffled, blocked, and shut down.
That would create the need for a secondary dominant microblogging platform that allows for freedom of ideas to be posted and not deleted due to political stance.
Enter Mastadon. It fills that void nicely. It’s still small as the majority of the userbase of twitter has no idea Mastodon exists. However it’s undeniable they are losing massive numbers of users. Not because they don’t like the twitter concept, but because they don’t like what it’s become.
With more marketing, mastodon COULD be the new dominant twitter, thus rendering that 44Billion dollar purchase even MORE stupid than it already is, if 90% of their userbase leaves.
But where you’ll lose them is if they have to make a choice. Mastodon 1 and Mastodon 2??? Well twitter was just twitter…this must not be twitter.
And just like that, you’ve confused and lost the new user. Forget the fediverse. Forget instances. Forget security. Forget federation. The normie user doesn’t know and doesn’t care about ANY of that. Instead just say “its one mastodon. It’s like twitter without facism”
Boom! User influx. This is already happening in spite of lack of marketing and the fediverse existing. Thats how badly people want a twitter clone. If someone else makes another non-fediverse clone, with no facism, and big money marketing, mastodon won’t grow to its full potential.
But for gods sakes! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot to spite yourself.