I think it just comes down to what you said: do you really want an experience like IG? If you’re a hard no, it’s probably not for you. I was kind of in the same place as you re: IG. Looking at my IG feed it’s about 50% recommended and promoted. So half my feed is what Meta wants me to see. It sucks now and I was over it. But a version of that without ads or algorithms is honestly pretty great – and I was skeptical of that until I tried it. I mean, IG has higher engagement than any network except TikTok, so it’s a format that people seem to like. They just hate the Meta part :)

I don’t think it takes away from Mastodon at all though. Like, I’m using Calckey which is very similar to Masto (and being renamed in literally 40 minutes) and it’s not harming the community at all. I think Pixelfed will probably be the thing that makes people realize how powerful the Fediverse is. To most people, being able to communicate between, say, Masto and Misskey probably just seems like having different clients. But the idea that you could communicate with all of Facebook and Twitter from an IG account is kind of mindblowing.