Good thing I checked via piefed.social, your comment isn't showing in fedia.io.

Anyway …

"The network never went down" because plenty of instances were already around. One such, during the OpenMicroBlogging and OStatus protocol days was "The TWiT Army Canteen" (aside: it was the first non-flagship instance that grew big and fast).

Instances (flagship or otherwise) going offline is not the same as the network shutting down. As long as there are instances federating, the network is online. Even during the protocol transition periods, everyone implemented dual protocols. Once everyone transitioned to the new protocol, it was only then software devs removed the old protocol. So, still the same network since 2008.

For example, I and many others were running our own Friendika/Friendica instances when Identica was migrated to PumpIO, and StatusNet's paid hosted service was discontinued. There were also other self-hosted StatusNet instances. The network remained online despite the flagship StatusNet/Laconica instance disconnected from OStatus and moved to PumpIO.

And out of it came the merged project GNU Social which existing StatusNet instances upgraded to. Then there was also Socialhome software, connected to both OStatus and diaspora*. Of course, Hubzilla too, and way much later, Mastodon®.

Even without the original, that same network from 2008 remained online, and today is powered by ActivityPub protocol.

I'm not dismissing the issues you've raised. Those are valid and surely, now that the network is 17 years already, they should be addressed. It could be a good write-up for someone and issue a call-to-action to everyone involved to bring the network to the next level. Otherwise, the network will become stagnant, and might die slowly.

I think, any writer or journalist reading this thread should get inspired by what you shared. It will make their article different and more relevant than simply saying "happy 17th year anniversary".