i understand user retention being a useful metric like “are we doing things right”, and low user retention can be a sign the onboarding is confusing or the software a pain to use

but at the same time, i feel like it's ok for users to try out Mastodon and figure out that this kind of social network is actually not what they were looking for

similarly, i understand trending hashtags and posts (sorry i still don't understand trending articles) can be useful to discover content and users who may interest you, but… are you doing that to help people find what they were initially searching for, or to constantly give them something new to engage with? also, trending stuff likely worsens the “popularity contest” side of things and requires proactive moderation