I'd say this type of layout that focuses more on long form textual content is better for tech savvy people who are likely to stick with the fediverse than the twitter clone that Mastodon was.

For the general user, I don't really think so. Not unless a couple big companies run their own instances and search engines bring up specific instances to join. The barrier to entry is relatively complex compared to something that just "works"

I'm wondering, does ActivityPub have a way to delete content such that the deletion is propagated to other instances?

its just reddit tbh

much better experience than mastodon imo