Respect to them for trying something new, can't blame them for it not working out. Though from the article it doesn't sound like they had any major issue with mastodon or its administration itself - their primary issue was the legal risks, which really should have been considered before launching. It seems disingenuous to use a headline like that when the main problem wasn't the running of the site, but a fear of legal repurcussions that could have been easily seen before making the site. That's my two cents anyway.

It is sad how regulation of social media seems to affect smaller sites more than the big ones. Legal liability looks very different to a company with flocks of lawyers than someone hosting a small server at home.