An unfortunate part of the fediverse is that it attracts people who were too obnoxious for even the more annoying parts of Reddit/Twitter/etc. I've made plenty of attempts to "get into" Mastodon and can confidently say that's a miserable experience across the board if you aren't willing to do the work to curate your feed. Even if you do get a feed that is free of bad actors, conversations rarely veer off-course from Linux, programming, computers, tech, etc., at which point that's fine, I guess, but it's hardly diverse. Also, for all the complaining about "techbros" ruining the fediverse, it sure is full of them.
I have more faith in Bluesky currently. If they're able to achieve their own kind of federation then I'll gladly jump ship since their userbase is a lot friendlier and more diverse that Mastodon IMO.
They must know they fucked up somewhere and decided to go this route rather than get exposed for potential shenanigans. From reading comments in other communities I was surprised to see a lot of people expected this outcome, although nobody was particularly specific about why (maybe someone here can give some insight.) For the record I've been on team "Fuck Nintendo" after the Gamecube, but I'd take the fact that other emulators haven't been targeted as possible hint that Nintendo got wind of something wacky going on. Who knows, maybe they're next?