Creating an audience can be done if you put a little effort into it. One of the biggest criticisms I hear from folks about moving to the Fediverse is the lack of audience and reach. It's been fine for me.

Thankfully systems like this are rather resistant to virality and influencer culture so it weeds attention-seeking behavior out of the mix. They cannot survive on Pixelfed/Mastodon for good reason.

They can stick to BlueSky and Threads if they want to game algorithms for clicks.