The moral of the story is to support projects that you might want to use in the future even if they are not finished yet before you need them. Mastodon and Lemmy have been around for years. When the mainstream alternative suddenly becomes lame, it isn't an emergency on the devs part.
You can apply this to most alternatives. Support GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape if you are an artist using Adobe products. Support mixxx, audacity, and lmms if you are a DJ. Support LibreOffice if you use Microsoft Office.