About 10 years ago, Angelo Sotira ($spyed) fired one of the other co-founders, Spot, and started pitting paying users against non-paying users. Free users had a marker on their profile saying “Needs Premium Membership.” The site also marked whether you were a paying or free user everywhere. Sound familiar?
They drew more controversy in 2018 when they hired this marketing firm to come up with a lackluster new logo everybody hated. Because, you know, it’s not like they had a bunch of artists using the site or anything.
I have Mastodon, and I only know one artist on there. The majority of them are still on Twitter even though they hate it.