 BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired. The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, an entity that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space. If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html 445 comments
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 @atomicpoet seemed unlikely but that's what it says at the bottom of the yahoo article @Sbectol Specifically, it says "The Social Coop"—which may be different from social.coop. But I don't know. Like it or not, it should no longer be assumed that "volunteers" are running your instances. The Mask Group, which now runs three large instances "has raised over US$50 million from private and institutional backers"—their words not mine. There's going to be a massive land grab of all these big instances. There will be lots of merging and acquiring too. My advice is that you all become *very* aware of who owns your instance and why. Get to know your admins—make sure their values align with your own. If you don't want to put your social media life in the hands of strangers, then self-host your own instance. @mveron Caveat: if they're a non-profit or a volunteer. Give no donations to instances run by for-profits.
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@adnan I can live with that. Why would I want to associate myself with re-centralists? @adnan aka the Gmail strategy. Hope they won't succeed here. (Higher management ineptitude and misunderstanding of the fediverse might help for once?) @atomicpoet I imagine that as Mastodon now is in the spotlight as a potential Twitter replacement, certain entities will see an opportunity to carve out power, profit, and influence by acquiring instances and centralising power. To everyone using mastodon.cloud and mstdn.jp: remember, you're not locked into those instances. If you want, you can migrate elsewhere. This is not Twitter—you have a choice regarding where your home will be on the Fediverse. A warning: there's going to be a concerted effort to re-centralize the Fediverse. As we've just seen with the acquisition of pawoo.net, that's already happening. What are you going to do to thwart this trend?  @atomicpoet As much as I agree w/ you, such an effort will fail. We can all vote w/ our feet by walking away to other instances. And if such 're-centralized' instances get blocked, they lose the momentum of network effect fairly fast. @gisiger Yes, that's one failsafe mechanism for the Fediverse. However, people need to care enough about de-centralization. @atomicpoet Does it matter? If the underlying protocols are architected for federation and easy migration then any instances that go bad won't last long. @rob The instances that have gone bad have lasted for a very long time. Technology does not replace human moderation. @atomicpoet If the actions of the operators cause users any problems then they are two button presses away from migrating to another instance. The Musk problem couldn't arise here, provided acquirers don't do deeply evil things like defeating the migration mechanism. Someone *will* try it and the community response will define how the ecosystem eventually goes. @atomicpoet “What are you going to do to thwart this trend?”   @atomicpoet Also - the larger the #instance, the greater the risk that, for example, due to poor #moderation, we will unwittingly become victims of defederation by other instances. Let's be as close to our admin as possible - preferably be your own admin of your instance. @atomicpoet how can I find infos about my instance ? Cant seem to find them, maybe i dont have the good keywords @atomicpoet As I’m currently finding out, this is not trivial at all. The technical part is doable for a seasoned sysadmin but not for people unfamiliar with servers and software development. The real issue however is discoverability and resource consumption. My tiny instance was close to empty until I enabled relays, which then flooded the media cache with data at several GB/hour. CPU usage spiked to an average of 175% on a two-core VPS. Also, repeatedly, posts arrive with large-ish delays. @hrbf There's another way to build federation without relays. But I can talk about that another day. @atomicpoet My point being: as is, your suggestion appears not to be a suitable solution for the issue you’re raising. @hrbf There's no doubt this takes energy and work. It might not be a solution for everyone, but if you have means and technical know-how, it's worth doing. Making it easier for everyone is also a worthwhile endeavour. @atomicpoet Absolutely. This won’t solve the discoverability issue though. I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on how to do this efficiently. @atomicpoet Interesting! I'd love to discuss this with you in private. What is your email? @atomicpoet Indeed... I run into "ET" beings occasionally, and research Xenopsychology and associated PSI abilities. It's hardcore woo on my instance, and we all try to remain anonymous for quite obvious reasons. I mean, with all the above being the case, I think anyone joining knows exactly what kind of thing they're trying to get into ;)  @Pineywoozle @atomicpoet Let me guess, nsfw Anime etc.? I doubt it was "ugly isms" ... @gisiger @atomicpoet I wonder if they’re going to warn people about the defederated status. @atomicpoet Ah, I would just block the whole instance. I don’t have the energy or the inclination to deal with garbage.   @atomicpoet It was only a matter of time for the Web3 grift to attach itself here. If they're putting say Monero or Bitcoin payment function into DMs that could be deemed useful. I suspect they'll have their own token which they can use as funny money to raise capital. I guess I'm a wee bit cynical. Let's see what happens...  @atomicpoet Interesting changes. Interesting, not necessarily good, as in "interesting times to live in". 😶️
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 @atomicpoet should probably mention that the defederation reason is that they have basically no moderation for english content, and that ends up just about the way you'd expect
 @atomicpoet this is big news only if you've been living under a rock. Pawoo has always been a commercial entity.
@atomicpoet That ‘article’ reads suspiciously like a straight-up copy/paste of a press release. @atomicpoet hosting companies have a big role in enabling this, just like they did with WordPress. Right now, it's technical to host your own instance so only a few would do it. Hopefully soon, hosting companies will have a one click install to have your own mastodon domain for five bucks a month. @atomicpoet Thankfully there are mechanisms in place to move from instances. But yes, this is definitely going to become a thing now that Mastodon is receiving attention beyond a thing some geeks do.  @atomicpoet This is absolutely fascinating and also makes me feel a bit gross reading it.  @atomicpoet Instances needs to start implementing rules to bind them to the mast and stop them from being bought out asap @atomicpoet we were just having a related discussion with @kaievans . I do worry that a truly mainstream audience isn't going to care about decentralization enough for that to prevent issues from this kind of thing. It doesn't shock me at all. Domain names, whole websites and databases are selling since existance of interent, so this is nothing new. Pawoo is also someones private property which allowed other people to use it as per their TOS. If YouTube could be sold to Google, why Pawoo shouldn't? But it's up to members if they want to stay or move to another instance
@atomicpoet i'm curious bc idk the story but why have people been unfederating with pawoo? i remember the name from long ago but haven't seen it in forever @atomicpoet @menica in this regard, should I preventively move ( and am I welcome) to eldritch cafe ? @atomicpoet Interesting, Pawoo seems to (?post /use) ads since MAY. @atomicpoet somebody sooner ol later will utilize web3 to monetize instance (it's not free, because computers aren't free and electricity is not free). And better that way than PayPal way. I would love to have Metamask login by the way, passwords sucks. @atomicpoet I read that as Musk and not Mask initially. Would not put it past him to try to purchase the competition. He’s got financial ties to Post as it is @atomicpoet I checked out the article, it didn't mention other instances de-federating from it. Can you help me understand why it would have been a target for de-federation? @atomicpoet wait, what? Mastodon.cloud is run by web3 types? I think I need to transfer servrers pronto... @atomicpoet there are some benefits in an instance with some friends despite it being a bit expensive. Dang, that's spooky. I wonder what the admin of my instance is like... Hopefully they're nice. @atomicpoet Defederation is the only valid response to such capitalistic instances; imagine our happy toots appearing among advertising for Lockheed-Martin, or even worse. @atomicpoet ...not surprising at all considering cryptobros and their lack of morals @atomicpoet wonder how many Zuckerberg has secretly swallowed. There should be an awareness campaign for people to read the privacy policy of instances carefully or perhaps a public directory of who's who and owns what. @Gargron @atomicpoet Honestly the only thing that's missing from Mastodon is support for payment networks. (not).  @atomicpoet I suppose this meens Pawoo.net is dead.... I'm sick of this Internet Wankiness  @atomicpoet@mastodon.social to be clear: they aquired the domain and the *users*. The only sane options, as @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org points out:  @atomicpoet
I wonder in which country they are registered seeing pawoo serves content deemed illegal in many countries.  @atomicpoet do we know why pawoo.net is widely shunned? And, if it's widely shunned, is its sale a matter of concern? @atomicpoet Why did "many instances de-federate from [pawoo.net]"? Didn't like the moderation policies, their business model ? Is “defederated” why, when attempting to follow an account, I have occasionally encountered a message that a given account is “suspended”?  @atomicpoet Man, I miss Pawoo when it was owned by Pixiv. It was mainly targeted for artist, now not so much... I wish @Gargron (mastodon.social) blocked pawoo.net instance as soon as possible. Advertising instances have to be defederated as soon as possible such as [un]Truth Social. They directly attemp to the #Fediverse founding principles and source code license of #Mastodon.  @atomicpoet The first thing I saw when looking at Pawoo was sh0tacon and l0licon „art“ - understandable why it is defederated. @atomicpoet everything in that Yahoo article sounds horrible and hypocritical. Mergers and growth and free and open internet are all opposing ideologies.  @atomicpoet Ha! That de-federation got somehow lost in the press release… 🤪interesting developments nevertheless. @atomicpoet An important point though: People who are already here and joined because it is a weird and inclusive place will stay. On the small instances. The people who join the large ones are those who don't care about our culture here anyways. So in the end it will be a new twitter for them and the rest might stay almost the same for the rest of us. They only want a new twitter anyways. @atomicpoet "The Pawoo acquisition marks another milestone of the Mask team towards the building of a decentralized social network and a free, open internet." Sorry, I don't understand. If instances are being acquired by a common owner, isn't that the opposite of decentralisation? @atomicpoet I don't think I follow anyone from there, but I'll block it for sure. @atomicpoet that web3 thing we should implement 1. Metamask login is beautiful @atomicpoet The former is a good reason, but I think the latter would be unfortunate.  @atomicpoet @atomicpoet If it is the same group that runs mstdn.jp, it'll still be full of cp
I just want that to end 😭  @atomicpoet Maybe Musk is trying to set a “#Muskodon” social networking platform ;-) @atomicpoet What does this mean for Mastodon at large, other Mastodon instances, users of Mastodon?  @atomicpoet and this is, kids, why federation and open protocols matters. Those users can change outside of Pawoo.net easily… if they so desire, of course. Also why medium-sized instances are probably the best place to be… @atomicpoet That is really big! mastodon.cloud was my first instance here... As far as I remember, lots of Japanese users. @atomicpoet Yikes Cryptobros and Web 3.0 corrupt everything they touch. I think it's very important In the future that there enough bigger default trustworthy servers with oversight for the average audience or it could end in a total shitshow.   @atomicpoet Why have instances de-federated from it? Is there offensive content or is it just the ownership? @atomicpoet Is there a tl;dr on why instances defederated from pawoo? (Not that it's necessarily a bad thing. Voluntarily creating semi-walled gardens is OK, just curious about the backstory.) @atomicpoet @atomicpoet that seems not great. Troubling in fact. I chose my instance at random when I fled Twitter. Is there a good place to go, to help understand all the nuances between instances? Probably better to move sooner than later. @atomicpoet given that i am very new to all this, why is this particular instance de-federated? poor moderation policies? @rysiek So this demonstrates another difference between Mastodon and the fediverse; you can be on Mastodon and not be on the fediverse! And what’s the point of THAT? Truth.social is Mastodon, and we’re the fediverse! (I can say that again now that I have fixed my ssl cert that expired overnight…) @atomicpoet I was always wondering why people believe that Mastodon instances are resistant to commercial exploitation, user data can be analyzed for all purposes and is not protected
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@atomicpoet I love when I see something like this and see that my instance has already de-federated them @atomicpoet screw Meta, being the one to setup / control the server of the main mastodon community on each topic is the real digital land rush @atomicpoet How do we know it’s reliable information? I have not seen this reported elsewhere. @atomicpoet Unsettling but important to acknowledge. Thanks for bringing it to our attention and spot on with making certain that your values match the instances.  |
Gregory's Server
@atomicpoet huh wtf so the two largest japanese fediverse entities are merging into one now :/