Mastodon

I don't think privacy will be ever an advantage of fediverse or any federated platform. Isn't it actually quite opposite by design? The goal of fediverse is to make you and your account discoverable by anyone. You comments, your likes, your follows are public. Fediverse is for freedom not for privacy.

If in 2026 you're on X, I don't think privacy would matter much to you. People will go to platforms that give them what X was giving them. Mastodon doesn't offer porn, it doesn't offer visibility to journalists, it does offer a little of bit of arguing with strangers, but definitely nowhere near the levels of X, where you can do it at any time of the day. Bluesky is still the best alternative on all these points.

Mastodon is not a company. They don't need to do anything to bring attention to them. Mastodon is not one thing, it's more things that do everything by federating.

Comparing mastodon with bluesky is one of the problems people face when trying to "go social". From my point of view it's pretty simple: if you want to "be guided", to be given ideas and "friends" you go with bluesky; if you want to invest some time and find people you like and get and share ideas, then go with mastodon/piefed/gosocial and any other fediverse service. But make sure you understand that you are the one creating your own network, not a company through an algorithm.