it’s been years now but just the generally, for lack of better term, “wokescold”-y or “shitlib”-y vibe of mastodon did a lot of that. the community felt extremely overbearing at times with content warnings and social norms, in a way that especially didn’t vibe with groups that are repressed and want to talk about those experiences. a lot of it was of course just technically confusing for some people, as was trying to leverage network effects to stick with your friends. some people–artists especially–had specific needs that were hard to meet with migration. and the whole process in general was haphazard and over time as people settled inevitably mastodon politics also got in the way of it, what with defederation being an option and all.

eventually i think it just burned a lot of people out on the platform in a way that has really precluded swathes of the furry community from setting up shop on another federated place, to avoid something like that happening again.