I think it's much less intimidating to new users now compared to when I joined last year. The barrier to entry has been reduced significantly.
There are tons of active communities now, mobile apps that work great (this is a big one), and many more tools to block content that you don't want to see.
In my mind, before I can play a game, I need to have lots of time, nothing else that I'm doing later, and the perfect amount of energy to really concentrate on it. Unfortunately, life has gotten busy, so I'm trying to get more comfortable playing for 20min here, 20min there instead of scrolling on my phone.
Public opinion seems to be souring on all the big corporate social media sites, and I truly think if we're able to get the word out about federated social media platforms, people will jump ship.
Also, it's hard to dislike a platform that isn't showing ads, selling user data, or generally making decisions for the enrichment of shareholders.
I'll start. Maybe one of the LLM/AI companies are trying to bypass newly implemented barrers to training data by using the archive, and it's totally overwhelming their servers?