Well that proves my point. Not only one tiny anecdote isn't evidence or a network effect, it is mostly techies continuing to complain about Twitter that are there, not those who don't care about technology, that is still using Twitter; in the hundreds of millions. Daily.

Even attempting to bring up the daily number of users on Mastodon after 7 years would be extremely painful to mention since Twitter still remains unchallenged.

This is before even mentioning the friction of 'Choosing an instance', already being the first barrier to entry being a failure for the user.

I don't really understand what you mean by 'challenging twitter' in this context. Why does the number of DAU matter? In what way are Mastodon and Twitter competing? Twitter is a business that needs to make money to survive. Mastodon is a federated network of services run by individuals and groups under a variety of arrangements.

I've been on Twitter since the first year. I watched it grow and change for the good and bad. I find I use mastodon far more these days. Pretty much daily. Why? The people I want to interact with are on Mastodon discussing the topics I want to discuss.

For me there is simply no comparison anymore. Mastodon wins hands down because: 1. signal to noise ratio is 1000x better and 2. the responses to my posts are high quality, faster, and 10x more than I get on Twitter (where I have 10x the followers).