Mastodon getting some attention is actually pretty good. It's one of the first times in a while where an online social media network is largely free from corporate control. The code is free and open, and there's no algorithm pushing ads and PR - just a chronological feed of people you follow. And it's definitely more hospitable to leftists than Twitter is, since leftists will always be able to host servers and moderate them.
Hopefully more leftist servers come about, but in the meantime, you can find any server that has a decent description and rules and join that. I recommend sorting by uptime and open registration.
how'd he do the first one
He made a bunch of tweets about it when a bunch of :freeze-peach: warriors were in limbo from Twitter, and it resulted in Signal's total downloads going from 10M to 50M in a month or so IIRC. So I guess normalizing it to some extent.
Also to clarify, Elon is not halfway based, his business model is based on whether the Tesla semi is going to be viable. Semi-based.