Cory Doctorow actually comes a cropper on his take on social media

More specifically, his take on fediverses in general and even more, on Mastodon in particular. I quote, from his take on the enshittification of social media:

I have watched virtually every service I relied on, gave my time and attention to, and trusted, go through this process. It happened with services run by people I knew well and thought highly of.

Enshittification can be thought of as the result of a lack of consequences. Whether you are tempted by greed or pressured by people who have lower ethics than you, the more it costs to compromise, the fewer compromises you'll make.

In other words, to resist enshittification, you have to impose switching costs on yourself.

That's where federation comes in. On Mastodon (and other services based on Activitypub), you can easily leave one server and go to another, and everyone you follow and everyone who follows you will move over to the new server. If the person who runs your server turns out to be imperfect in a way that you can't endure, you can find another server, spend five minutes moving your account over, and you're back up and running on the new server

Wrong on multiple counts.

First, there's a high egotism level in assuming that anybody and everybody who follows you on one "instance" or server on a place like Mastodon has enough emotional and intellectual investment in you to follow you to a new server. That's why a "federated" book review site like Bookwyrm doesn't interest me.

More of how this is a problem here:

Communities are not siloed independent bubbles. People are Venn diagrams of lots of communities and interests. Selecting a username can be difficult, deciding which community you want as part of your identity—even if you can change it—is too much. The act of choosing a server has kept more than a few people away from Mastodon.

Exactly. What if Doctorow, for example, hates baseball? Or hates classical music (which has less of a following than baseball, but still)?

There's another issue, also mentioned at that link. That is the cost in both time and money to run an "instance." The former? Good luck getting more helpers; look at subReddits and moderator churn. The money? Founder Eugen Rochko is still running on donations, basically, and the donations, AFAIK, all stay 100 percent with him.

Second, of course, specific to Mastodon, it ignores Mastodon's own problems.

Beyond the racism? Child sexual abuse postings. Now, that and racism could be special problems at any decentralized social media. OTOH, the founder of a particular fediverse-type system could require anyone starting a new "instance" to sign an official hierarchical code of conduct.

That said, there's not only the racism, and child sexual abuse, but Internet security issues. That and more are all here. And, if that's not enough, yet more here. And the issue that its founder, Eugen Rochko, not only does not run away from, but openly embraces, the appellation of "Benevolent Dictator for Life."

Beyond that, it continues to have some degree of functionality problems from the decentralization. Take this piece. If, because a person's on another server, I can't fully see their profile? Hard pass on engaging with them. 

Finally, as far as people using Mastodon? As far as actually using Mastodon, rather than starting an account and then getting frustrated? The reality is far different from the claims. Indeed, the top commenter to that post specifically mentioned trying to follow Doctorow on long threads. And?

4) Nothing frickin' threads...For example, I used to follow Cory Doctorow and his 30-post thread would litter my bleeping timeline. Why can't Mastodon collect all that and automatically collapse it unless I expand the view? This is a serious usability issue.

Not a good recommendation.

And, also, arguably a statement of how it's not just capitalism that causes enshittification.

And, if Doctorow is not just once but repeatedly papering over the reality of Mastodon, we also have a petard-hoisting moment.

As for what the future is? None of the above, IMO. If Shitter gets incredibly worse, I'll just use it less, but not go to BlueSky and not try to reactivate my old Mastodon.