I’m not sure many people would choose to go back…

I would.

There's a school of thought, which says for all of human history, we interacted with "about" a few hundred people. Sure, a few exceptions like the king or w/e, but for most ppl it held. Restoring that interaction scale, or sth close to it, may be the only way to prevent what becomes of FB, X, Reddit, and the rest.

In the olden days, there were small NON-federated, topic forums. I'm sure some sucked, that's fair. But very many were good. Right up until FB came and steamrolled that entire forum ecosystem into the dust of history. A few remain to this day tho, and they are STILL good. They are not the toxic dumpster fires of FB and the rest.

But I agree with you, Gemini is prob not going to grow beyond a minute niche.