The level of "privacy" provided by these Mastodon things is so ridiculous it's absurd. And yet apparently it works and people like it and use it?

I mean, that seems to be case from what I can infer from horribly-concerned terrible-writer person here: it's a thing they trust to work, everybody trusts to work, and works most of the time. And they get very angry when it doesn't work -- even though it should be obvious to anyone there is basically nothing preventing it from stopping working completely anytime. It's all make-believe magic-wand technology.