My 2yo is having a bad day, so he's laying on me and watching the Nightmare Before Christmas. This was a hard 3 paragraphs to read; I'm sorry you, or anyone, had to go through that. I'm gonna hug my son now, until he's upset again.
You have to make it as simple as signing up for Reddit/Facebook/TikTok if you want it to take off. Even a whiff of private key and you start losing normal people. You end up with only tech nerds, or privacy nerds, or some other kind of nerd on your platform. Picking an instance is already too much for most people.
The fediverse will never rule any social media or anything of the sort. Non tech people are turned off by picking a server during account creation. Not to mention all of the drama between instances. Fediverse is just for nerds. Loops is tiktok for nerds.
Hey! I live there! Had some right wing groups try to take over local gov few years back. Old mayor was adjacent to these groups if I'm remembering correctly. It'll be good not seeing them around anymore.
Everything, but in too many small ways for me to list. You just keep going, and I'll let you know when you mess up.