Gregory's Server@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.
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39 comments
 @atomicpoet @gisiger the general population doesn't care though and likely never will. the option with the biggest marketing budget will get the largest user base @atomicpoet @gisiger sure but having a brand and a message that will reach and resonate with the mass population will be very tricky for any decentralised, open source system @atomicpoet @gisiger no, not impossible. is there a fediverce foundation yet that could co-ordinate this part of the work?   @atomicpoet @mensrea But Mozilla takes money from Google, therefore it's a front for Google to take over the fediverse! (not my words, but I just read something along those lines here ...) @gisiger @atomicpoet @mensrea that's quite a leap to take. Google paying Firefox to be their default search engine as they do Apple. Not sure how that translates to Mozilla becoming a front for a hypothetical Google desire to take over the fediverse @gisiger @atomicpoet @mensrea I take money from my employer, yet I'm not just their front here. @gisiger @atomicpoet @mensrea @atomicpoet @gisiger i was thinking more of a group body for the fediverce writ large that can do co-ordinated marketing, advocacy, education, lobbying, ... @atomicpoet @mensrea @gisiger Could folks organize one? Maybe that is naive. @WuMargaret @atomicpoet @mensrea I'm pretty sure, that's possible. But someone has to finance it, which in turn will be criticized by some (cf. Mozilla and Google). But, the German company by Eugen Rochko @Gargron behind Mastodon is already a non-profit LLC. @WuMargaret @atomicpoet @gisiger yup, someone with enough organization and people herding skill could get it going.  @dsfgs @atomicpoet @witchescauldron @mensrea @gisiger @lightone A list - spreadsheet- of instances with this kind of info - who owns, legal status (NPO, LLC, etc.), what CDN they use, etc. might be interesting. Would want to also include info on whether blocked a lot, moderation policy, what fork of any etc. @atomicpoet @mensrea @gisiger No silver bullet, but Fediverse instances for specific languages, regions, topics... are more likely to be run and supported by volunteers. Call it branding on instance level. Think globally, act locally. But: soon commercial providers will offer "host an instance for your community". Not good. @mensrea @atomicpoet yes, that's why I'm happy of instances of big(ger) OS projects like Vivaldi or Mozilla. Yet many people don't like those and block them (happened already to Vivaldi) 🤷♀️ @gisiger @mensrea @atomicpoet That anti-corporation attitude will kill Mastodon one day. @jspetrak @mensrea @atomicpoet well, not kill per se, but sink it (back) into the muddy waters of the 'open source sectarians' ... @gisiger @jspetrak @mensrea @atomicpoet which might not be so muddy at all on second thought *sigh* oh well... ymmv  @atomicpoet @gisiger
"However, people need to care enough about de-centralization." t. user of one the largest and most sanitized instances in existence @atomicpoet @gisiger if you want people to care, you have to make it easy for them to discover. My favorite idea is forming consortia of Mastodon admins with similar values to actively de-federate bad instances. @atomicpoet @gisiger I'd say that for most, ease of communication is higher priority than decentralization. If the Fediverse continues to scale up, I fully expect that some dominant, but not exclusive, commercial sites that provide an attractive user experience will emerge, just as happened with email. Other instances can respond to that in various ways, but I don't expect that defederating them on principle would work any better than refusing to exchange email with AOL or gmail would have. @JMarkOckerbloom @atomicpoet @gisiger @ZiptieZoe @atomicpoet @gisiger I agree many will, just as a number of people choose indie email services, often for ethical or privacy reasons. Though those email services generally keep exchanging email with the big providers, who serve the majority of email users and are cheaper & easier to use for many than most indie email services. Any instance can of course refuse to federate with any other. But it'll be a very different experience on narrowly federating instances than on broad ones. @gisiger @atomicpoet Maybe? But I bet the majority of people don't care about centralization at all and can't be bothered to move. And if there are enough people on centralized instances, blocking them won't matter, it will isolate us more than them. @gisiger @atomicpoet Regardless, though, the vast majority of my friends and connections on Mastodon are on small servers and I will happily stay here with them. |
@gisiger Yes, that's one failsafe mechanism for the Fediverse. However, people need to care enough about de-centralization.