Gregory's Server@atomicpoet The biggest issue with federation is trust. Unless smaller instances market themselves as trustworthy, barely any new users will pick them. Many small instance admin teams are anonymous random people. This doesn't help. The biggest instances benefit from "everyone I know has picked them, so can't be bad" and "too big to fail". We as users have no real way to influence the masses and as bad as it makes me feel saying it, we need ... "influencers" for that.
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9 comments
@atomicpoet As you've posted, big money is coming in, acquiring instances already. But I think there's also going to be smaller players, funded organizations with boards instead of anonymous admins that promise a culture that people can subscribe to. Made sustainable by people paying for a service—just a small amount. Just like with email where Gmail dominates, but it doesn't bother me too much. There's a healthy ecosystem for email out there for people who care and support smaller companies. @atomicpoet Oh and I think many people will stay far away from running their own instances because social media is such a controversial topic in many legislations. The legal ramifications are insane.  @tobyx @atomicpoet @char Germany for example has the NetzDG law which mandates the removal of hate speech among other things with big penalties if you don't react within 24 hours. On the other hand, it only applies to social networks with 2 million or more users. The law never considered federation however, so who wants to be the first prime case in court with the opposing side arguing total reach instead of local users? There's also copyright law (DMCA etc.) that opens you up for liability. @atomicpoet @tobyx we should find ways to monetize them like miners. Otherways they will eat us. There are no financial incentives to run own instance and now there is one - I potentially could be bouth by big fish. without some kind of money it's a voluntary lose deal. And why they should do it for free? Don't they deserve salary? Why they should work another job, aren't they instance valuable? Or we want them to work for some corporation and managing instance on work-free hours? @atomicpoet @tobyx Make no mistake, if/when 750m Twitter refugees sign into Mastodon, *those* will form the culture here more than anybody who's been around since 2017. Mastodon's Eternal September might only just have begun. @atomicpoet @tobyx |
@tobyx The way to fix this is to build a culture that values de-centralization. The notion of self-hosting and administrating your own instance should be normalized. We should embrace small.