There will always be a specter looming over mastodon in the form of an unanswered question: What is social media for? Or put better, What do we want social media to be?
If it's just a place to scream into the nether, then it really doesn't matter who's listening to you.
If it's more than that, if it's a place for communities to collaborate and communicate; and I vibe with this more, then we will need to build it to be that sort of place.