I really don't think its your own friends who need to be convinced to use Mastodon or anything else ActivityPub.
Who needs to be convinced are the content creators.
What we really could use are content management systems that can publish directly to the open web and then be interacted with by compatible systems. CNN.com and House.gov, for example, could be host systems that provide content out to the wider Fedi.
> Who needs to be convinced are the content creators.
People posting to Facebook and Twitter are content creators. A big reason those platforms are so popular is that they make it dirt simple to post, i.e., to create content.
> What we really could use are content management systems that can publish directly to the open web and then be interacted with by compatible systems.
We already have those: websites. CNN.com and House.gov already provide content to the entire Internet. But for the average person it's much easier to just post to FB or Twitter than fire up their own website. Also, if they post on FB and Twitter they know people will read it, whereas if they post on their own website, who knows who will read it?
> Who needs to be convinced are the content creators.
They've gone where the money is. So long as YouTube and Twitch write checks, people are going to make content on those platforms. They're not going to spend their own time and money (on top of content production) to host the content or run some FediVerse server.
Content creators could jump ship and run their own ads but then they've got increased costs/effort for promotion. They also aren't going to get good payouts unless they've got a huge audience that will come with them.
Who needs to be convinced are the content creators.
What we really could use are content management systems that can publish directly to the open web and then be interacted with by compatible systems. CNN.com and House.gov, for example, could be host systems that provide content out to the wider Fedi.