I think it all comes down to why does Meta do anything?Money. And, the timing of their supposed interest in the Fediverse is after the second notable exodus from a major social network. Meta sees more people & more engagement here which equates to more potential profits on their end.
I looked into Mastodon after the whole Twitter thing in November, but I didn't really use Twitter, so an alternative at the time didn't make sense for me. However, I was an avid Reddit user for the last nine years, so when these API changes came to light and my app (Sync) was going to cease to exist, well I took the Fediverse alternatives more seriously and realized that ActivityPub is awesome technology that is now invaluable to the internet.
Elireum
DrChickenbeer