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@chr It took multiple years after it was acquired for folks to finally leave LJ, and some folks sticked on well past its server migration to RU. By comparison, folks only left AIM, ICQ, MSN when Microsoft shuttered it for Skype, offering no alternative to migrating. Tumblr lost most of its actives overnight due to the "porn" account bans.
By comparison, Blogger, MySpace, and others had more of a slow migration towards newer spaces, and are now mostly irrelevant.
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@chr In that continuum, I saw a lot of folks set up alternatives (including mainstream journalists!) then not really use them. Experts left, and quite a few big accounts saw success with reduced followings here.
I think we can expect that the majority of folks only switch when the pain of staying is much greater than sticking around. Also, expect laziness to do work here if they find something easier to use: the old platform will gradually become irrelevant.
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@chr Anyway, tl;dr: even though we've seen very large interest in Masto, it's still a few years out before Twitter is meaningfully going to fail unless it buckles unrecoverably. A lot of terribleness will be absorbed and be handwaved away because Twitter is still a useful service without a meaningful alternative that retains its simplicity, dopamine loop, and culture.
Same with FA, with the bonus that no one has successfully simplified how gallery sites work yet.
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@chr The good news though, especially with Discord, is that a lot of us have been around this block more than once -- and know how to back shit up and host them online when the services inevitably go dark.
So the plans that muskrat has to silence critics online, and the fear that Discord closing will one day knock out large swathes of culture -- will happen, but will also be much less terrible once folks collect back together.
And this will happen every 7-10y or so.
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@chr Anyway, that's a lot of words to say that if you want to interact with folks only on birdsite, do it. They'll be there a while.
And what's happening to it is a cycle that'll turn towards alternatives eventually, but this whole thing will repeat onto the next services onwards for as long as people remain social creatures.