@evan I don’t know if following 1-2 thousand is a reasonable expectation for topping out.
On both Twitter and Instagram, I often saw people following 10,000+ people. I’m sure most of them weren’t actively following most of those people, but it happened.
Also, there’s the matter of people following you. You could follow one person, but if 1 million people are following you, then that presents problems if you’re on a small server. I mean, you could also limit how many people follow you – but if you’re posting a message publicly, don’t you want that message to be publicly accessible to as many people as possible?
I bring this all up because what draws people to a social network is access to a large network effect. Generally speaking, people want to be seen. Often, the draw of something like YouTube and Instagram is that you could make a living by being an influencer at something. If that’s your goal, then the idea of running a server is simply not financially feasible for many people.
Here’s a thought for you. MrBeast has 252 million followers on YouTube. If he started his own ActivityPub enabled server, how much would it cost him to have 252 million followers?