As I say in the article: Despite these problems, many people on well-moderated instances have very positive experiences in today’s fediverse. Especially for small-to-medium-size instances, for experienced moderators even Mastodon’s tools can be good enough. However, many instances aren’t well-moderated. So many people have very negative experiences in today’s fediverse.
This is what I interpreted as „come a long way“. Make of it what you will.
And to your other claims: start asking yourself why the others are „better“ in your opninion but don’t have high adoption. The answer is pretty straight forward as you have been told by everyone else in this thread:
Mastodon and the fediverse works like a charm. People love it. But we need to stay focused to improve and steel against human nature.