@tomw I see what you're saying, but it's equally true...

@tomw I see what you're saying, but it's equally true that the opposite may be the case. Even though they don't intend to, lots of new users may have the effect of centralising Mastodon.

Yes, yes. I know about the decentralised architecture, open source, blah, blah. But a huge number of users constitute a huge market, and that'll attract someone, somewhere to create a value-added layer to Mastodon that'll have the EFFECT of centralising it.

I reckon data-mining may be the mechanism.

Like 21 Nov 2022 at 14:07 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mas.to

2 comments

Tom Walker

@jameswallbank I can imagine a "super-instance" emerging that would have some of these effects – think for example of what Gmail is to the email world. But it is still possible, at least, for other email servers to send and receive from Gmail (most of the time).

21 Nov 2022 at 14:15 | Open on mastodon.social

James Wallbank

@tomw Yes, I can see that as a possibility. But I do wonder whether data-mining across many Mastodon instances could provide powerful search and statistics for users, plus a marketable resource for advertisers. Individual Mastodon instances may not exploit our data, but someone might!

21 Nov 2022 at 20:37 | Open on mas.to