The report’s core fault is conceptual and methodological. Its definition of “alternative social media” is “social media sites with relatively small user bases that have typically emerged as alternatives to larger, more established social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.”
I think as the fediverse we need to move a bit more into the “real” space and form “citizens” social media around real places instead of just niche online interests. That is probably the best way to get more people interested in the fediverse if there is an instance for the city they live in or something like that.
Being decentralized and at the same time interconnected would really work out as a strength in such a scenario.
I agree with this observation. Getting people who otherwise do no care about “backend, code phiosophy etc” to see the power of fediverse would be a major milestone. A lot of people care about something like sports. Having an organized way to discuss news, streaming, historical footage etc would bring such converged interests regardless of whether they understand ActivityPub specifications.