I recently came across an essay that basically argued we should separate “social media” from “attention media”, as the latter is what these places has morphed into.

I think that’s exactly right. The one caveat I would throw in is that the federated alternatives are solving a slightly different problem, namely centralization. And that in and of it self did, at least at first, genuinely recreate a feel everyone recognized as belonging to a prior era of the internet. A different structure of who ones it, stopping the network from being bent toward monetization. That’s a real thing.

It’s easy to be jaded by BlueSky in particular because it effectively ate Mastodon’s lunch and got its attention, while not truly being federated or leading to any culture reset. And perhaps more importantly. BlueSky appealed I think to an aesthetic curiosity more than a philosophical purpose, so I think it gives people the wrong impression of what the fediverse is all about.

I agree that Frendica sucks. For the longest time these alternatives were designed appallingly bad. Mastodon was the first case of non-stupid design, quickly followed by Lemmy, Pixelfed and Loops. An era of devs who know what they’re doing on the design side, at least to a much greater degree than before.