I’ve been thinking about Tim Chambers’ 2026 Open Social Web predictions, and there’s something that doesn’t quite sit right with me. Not because Tim’s wrong—he’s clearly passionate about this space and has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening—but because his predictions read like a scorecard for a game I’m not sure we should be playing.

Counting What Doesn’t Count

Tim predicts that Bluesky will cross 60 million users, that Threads will pass 500 million monthly active users, that the ActivityPub Fediverse will reach 15 million registered users. These are specific, measurable predictions. They’re the kind of thing you can come back to in December 2026 and mark as right or wrong with a red pen.

But here’s what nags at me: the people who left Twitter for Mastodon didn’t leave because Twitter had too few users. They left because it had too many of the wrong incentives. They didn’t want a platform optimised for engagement and viral reach. They wanted something smaller, quieter, more deliberate. They wanted communities they could actually be part of, not audiences they performed for.

So when we celebrate user growth as the primary metric of success, aren’t we just importing the values of the thing we were trying to escape?

The Corporate Question

Several of Tim’s predictions centre on corporate adoption of ActivityPub. Threads getting bigger. Bluesky raising more venture capital. Cross-protocol bridges between different networks. And I understand why this feels like progress—more interoperability means more reach, more validation, more resources flowing into the space.

But I keep coming back to a simple question: whose problems does this solve?

Threads’ partial federation—which Tim realistically predicts will remain opt-in and incomplete through 2026—primarily benefits Meta. They get to hoover up content from the Fediverse whilst keeping their users safely inside their walled garden. It’s extraction dressed up as interoperability.

Bluesky’s venture funding might accelerate development, but venture capital doesn’t flow without expectations. At some point, those investors want returns that dwarf their investment. That pressure doesn’t typically lead to user-first design. It leads to growth-first design, which is exactly what many of us were trying to get away from.

I’m not saying corporate involvement is inherently bad. But I am saying we should be clear-eyed about what it means. A company’s first obligation is to its shareholders, not to its users. That’s not a moral failing—it’s just how capitalism works. But it does mean that corporate participation in the Fediverse will always carry a fundamental tension with the Fediverse’s community-first values.

What Actually Matters

Here’s what I think would genuinely improve my experience on Mastodon, and the experience of the instance operators who make this whole thing possible:

Better moderation tools that work across instances. Right now, moderating a Fediverse instance is hard work, and the tools aren’t great. Tim does mention PieFed’s moderation capabilities, which is encouraging. But this is buried amongst predictions about user counts and funding rounds.

Improved discovery that doesn’t require centralised algorithms. Tim’s predictions about Fediscovery and ActivityRank actually address this, and these are some of the most valuable parts of his article. They’re about solving real problems that real users face.

More sustainable funding models for the people running instances. This is the infrastructure that makes everything else possible, and it’s largely invisible in discussions about the Fediverse’s future. Tim mentions Mastodon gGmbH’s sustainability efforts, but running a Mastodon instance isn’t free, and most instance operators are doing it out of pocket or through small community donations.

Better mobile clients and easier onboarding. If you’ve ever tried to explain to a non-technical friend how to join Mastodon, you know this is a real problem. “First, pick an instance. No, not a server—well, yes, it’s a server, but we call them instances. Yes, you can move later, but your posts don’t always come with you…”

These aren’t sexy predictions. They won’t make headlines. But they’re what would actually make the Fediverse better for the people already using it.

A Different Kind of Success

The Fediverse exists because people wanted something different. Not bigger. Different. A social web where you’re not the product being sold. Where algorithms don’t decide what you see. Where communities can set their own rules and protect their own members.

That’s not to say growth is bad. More people on the Fediverse means more voices, more perspectives, more communities. But growth without intentionality is just sprawl. And if we measure success purely by user counts and market share, we’re using Silicon Valley’s ruler to measure something that was meant to be built differently.

Tim’s optimistic about government adoption, particularly in Europe. That could genuinely help—government presence validates the technology, brings resources, creates pressure for interoperability. But it could also bring the opposite: bureaucracy, surveillance, political pressure. The Fediverse’s value isn’t just that it’s decentralised—it’s that it’s user-controlled. Government participation could strengthen that or undermine it, depending on how it’s done.

The Questions We Should Ask

Instead of asking which platforms will get biggest, maybe we should be asking:

Which platforms will achieve financial sustainability without venture capital or advertising? How will moderation tools evolve to protect vulnerable communities? Will instance operators get better tools for managing costs and scaling? How will onboarding improve for people who aren’t already comfortable with federation and protocols? Which features will make the Fediverse accessible to people with disabilities?

These questions don’t lend themselves to easy predictions. You can’t mark them right or wrong with a red pen in December 2026. But they’re closer to what actually matters if we’re serious about building a social web that serves people rather than shareholders.

Finding the Balance

Tim’s work documenting these trends is valuable. Many of his predictions will probably turn out to be accurate. And some of them—particularly around discovery and moderation—do address genuine user needs.

But as the Fediverse grows, we need to stay focused on why it exists. Not just as a smaller Twitter. Not just as a more ethical Facebook. But as something genuinely different: a space where communities can thrive without exploitation, where users control their data and their experience, where success is measured in healthy relationships rather than engagement metrics.

The goal isn’t just to be big. It’s to be better.

Tim’s right that 2026 will be important for the open social web. I just hope we’re measuring its success by whether we’ve built something genuinely different, not by how closely we’ve replicated the metrics of the platforms we left behind.

Because at the end of it all—and I realise the irony of writing this on a personal blog that federates via ActivityPub—the Fediverse’s future should be measured in whether we’ve created a social web that respects users, empowers communities, and resists the gravitational pull of surveillance capitalism.

That’s harder to predict than user counts. But it’s the future worth building.

• Micro.blog