I just wanted to say thank you SO much for all this attention!
As for questions of the use of the phrase ActivityPub, I used that because Mastodon is also seeing the huge growth that is happening on here and Lemmy. So, the question then became whether to say it is growth in Mastodon or growth in KBin/Lemmy, but none of those made any sense. I could've went with the growth on the fediverse, but the fediverse is more of the word used to describe the type of protocol. It kind of made sense, but it made more sense in my head to refer to the protocol, ActivityPub. When users sign up to KBin, Lemmy, Beehaw, or Mastodon, the protocol as a whole benefits. A user signs up to Mastodon, then KBin also sees an increase by one user. Same thing for the other way around. So, that's how I settled on that headline in the end.
Anyway, it is SUPER exciting to see the growth of KBin, Lemmy, and Beehaw. I really like the idea of decentralized social media and the idea that it's ad and tracker free is a huge bonus. I really hope I am witnessing a huge long term success story in its early days.
Based on my experience when I was joining Mastodon in the initial wave that happened when Twitter began melting down, there's going to be some teething processes to go through. Servers will go down, doubters will jump on the slightest hint of things not going well, but I have a feeling that the growing pains will be less severe than when Twitter first got huge. Mastodon handled the initial waves of users way better than a lot of people thought possible, so if history repeats itself, people may be surprised with how well KBin, Lemmy, and Beehaw handle the unflux as well. The fun of decentralized servers!