a cool thing that I didn't expect is the huge influx of open source developers deciding they've got issues with mastodon and making it their hobby to try and fix it.
I'm not sure it will be great for masto's culture, if it wants to keep what is has, but in terms of software and the internet, a lot of new people are having a lot of new ideas about the future of social media, and learning all the hard problems pretty rapidly. even if they don't stick with it, it means better things and better discussions on them going forward, I think.
