@Ben Pate ? Maybe it's because Hubzilla and Zot were too obscure back in the day for anyone to know them. After all, still today, I guess every other Friendica user hasn't heard of Hubzilla yet. And back when Mastodon was designed, nobody even knew Friendica.

Or maybe it's because Zot would have been considered utter overkill for something as simple as microblogging. Had they only known how many people struggled with moving between Mastodon instances in the last months...