The article would've been more powerful if it focused on ActivityPub rather than presenting Mastodon as the only option. The whole benefit of having a common protocol is precisely that Mastodon isn't the only option. We have Pixelfed, Lemmy, PeerTube, Friendica, BookWyrm, Funkwhale, Pleroma, and so on.

All of these platforms interoperate which means growth on any one of them grows the fediverse as a whole. This is the direct opposite dynamic from what we see with corporate platforms which compete for users and create walled gardens making it really hard to share content from one platform to another. Hence why sharing screenshots has become so common now.

The beauty of the fediverse is in its interoperable design, and Mastodon is just one piece of the puzzle here.