I don't think people are realising the danger the Fediverse is in.
The only thing stopping corporations and VCs taking over this place is that the Fediverse is spread out on many different servers, which makes it very difficult to purchase.
If most of the Fediverse ends up on mastodon.social, which is now a strong possibility, there will be nothing to stop most of it being sold to Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever.
The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more likely a buyout is to happen.
(1/4)
I feel for the mastodon devs a little. People scream ‘onboardings too difficult, why make me pick a server!!!’ and when it gets changed to promote a single server (with a secondary button to choose your own) everyone loses their minds.
There are plenty of issues beyond this. Discoverablilty, identity blah blah. I’m more concerned that 6 months after twit explodes, not much has happened with those, or that another fedi app hasn’t taken the crown. Lots to the apps and interfaces only work on mastodon, not a ap standard.
Maybe it would take a **-funded startup using activity pub to get things sorted.
Both the sympathy and alarmism make sense because the real issue isn’t what mastodon has done (so far) it’s that they are so dominant that a single mastodon instance isn’t far from being half the fediverse.
It’s not really mastodon’s fault, though they could be better at promoting alternatives given their size. But there is something out of balance at the moment, and mindfully addressing it is important future health.
Just talking about what a healthy fediverse means and looks like and what actions can be taken to ensure it is valuable.
Personally, truly nomadic identity feels like an obvious necessity for me. I’m not sure I can say the feed diverse is actually cool or interesting, as opposed to a collection of some interesting open source software, until some form of nomadic identity is essentially required to be considered part of the fediverse.
@_ed@Berserkware They could have chosen a different wording though: instead of choose your own server they should have better said choose a different server and add a small ℹ️ button with a small pop-up explaining the fact that Mastodon works differently than other social media networks and in what way (briefly). By saying your own it implies that the user should already own a server (hence your own) instead of letting them know that they have a choice.
I feel for the mastodon devs a little. People scream ‘onboardings too difficult, why make me pick a server!!!’ and when it gets changed to promote a single server (with a secondary button to choose your own) everyone loses their minds.
There are plenty of issues beyond this. Discoverablilty, identity blah blah. I’m more concerned that 6 months after twit explodes, not much has happened with those, or that another fedi app hasn’t taken the crown. Lots to the apps and interfaces only work on mastodon, not a ap standard.
Maybe it would take a **-funded startup using activity pub to get things sorted.
Both the sympathy and alarmism make sense because the real issue isn’t what mastodon has done (so far) it’s that they are so dominant that a single mastodon instance isn’t far from being half the fediverse.
It’s not really mastodon’s fault, though they could be better at promoting alternatives given their size. But there is something out of balance at the moment, and mindfully addressing it is important future health.
Just talking about what a healthy fediverse means and looks like and what actions can be taken to ensure it is valuable.
Personally, truly nomadic identity feels like an obvious necessity for me. I’m not sure I can say the feed diverse is actually cool or interesting, as opposed to a collection of some interesting open source software, until some form of nomadic identity is essentially required to be considered part of the fediverse.
@_ed @Berserkware They could have chosen a different wording though: instead of choose your own server they should have better said choose a different server and add a small ℹ️ button with a small pop-up explaining the fact that Mastodon works differently than other social media networks and in what way (briefly). By saying your own it implies that the user should already own a server (hence your own) instead of letting them know that they have a choice.