There's nothing wrong with being a separate entity from big corporates. Mastodon is pretty big already and it's going keep growing. Fast growth isn't the point, it's sustainability and providing a haven for people who don't want enshittification and other corporate bullshit. If someone want that they can just use a corporate owned social media, nothing wrong with that. Reddit has never been the biggest fish in the pond anyway, and the whole thing with trying to pull in users is a part of what made the platform worse. Bringing in corporates is gutting the biggest thing that make Fediverse appealing. And for the record, there isn't that many big companies that'd be a threat anyway. Any corporates that aren't big social media corps isn't really the problem. If Nintendo wants to make an instance to be the second Mii verse I highly doubt many people would be against federating with them.
Aurora_Borealia