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)
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.
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.