1/ People seem increasingly concerned about the term "daily active users" (DAU).

It's used by other web2 social networks (in SEC filings!) and now other decentralized social networks; we use Meta's definition (below).

Is there likely a better definition? Yes! 

Have we come up with a better methodology? Not yet.

starting from a baseline of something meta defined and leaving it as is does not inspire much faith

Bias Research Ltd. • Druglord 
De-di-designer, autodidact. 🗿 UX AI/ML  • Channeling @punk • 
punk.energy 🫧 /punk • dont let your /antimeme ‘s stay dreams

What would you propose as an alternative?

don’t have a simple answer for you readily available, it just strikes me that if you’re trying to create/curate the next-gen social experience that borrowing any definition from the old guard isn’t breaking any grounds or even getting off on the right foot, imo

That definition is very agnostic as to what experience you give them. I’m no fan of big social, but they were really good at what they did.

Let’s not bend ourselves backwards avoiding useless terms. It’s the actions we want to avoid :)