I think this is a good time to remind people: these sort of opportunities will often present themselves due to a combination of factors well beyond any fediverse user’s control. Trying to force them to occur is like trying to build a house out of unpacked sand, it’ll quickly fall apart.

What advocates need to do is to focus on building a solid foundation within the Fediverse so that these opportunities can be capitalized on more effectively each time. We don’t want it where people join then leave when the hype dies down, when they see a lack of content, or get annoyed with platform quirks. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of discourse tries to focus on marketing-first and assumes the rest will sort itself out. It’s the opposite actually.

Relating to the topic at hand though, I agree with Eugen. Direct people to other instances. Do not let mastodon.social’s downtime dissuade people. If anything, this might be a good opportunity to spread traffic across instances.