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.
Here's what Eugen Rochko's Mastodon gGmbH organisation now controls:
-The Mastodon server software & API (though the current version is FOSS)
-The mastodon.social server, which has 1 in 7 of all Fediverse users
-The official Mastodon apps, now telling people to just sign up on mastodon.social
-The official website at joinmastodon.org
-The trademark for the word "mastodon", which lets them dictate terms to any server which uses it
This is a tempting package for any potential buyers.
@feditips In the US, non-profit organizations are protected from this kind of predatory takeover because, as non-profits, they aren't easily monetizable. That's how the Wikimedia Foundation works, for example. Does the German gGmbH designation offer similar protections?
@feditips I don’t think this is a four alarm fire just yet and it may be that acting like it will cause people to abandon this part of the #Fediverse to avoid it. More concerning is the lack of response on Eugen’s side. Has there been any answer from him?
@feditips It’s not tempting because as a gGmbh (non-profit company) all the profit stays in the company and does not flow the owner. And you can‘t change that easily.
@feditips Since the trademark thing keeps coming up: it bears keeping in mind that the code is still MIT-licensed.
The gGmbh gets to dictate terms to things that want to call themselves “Mastodon” - it doesn’t get to dictate terms to anyone running the code under a different name.
@feditips I downloaded the Mastodon app, and this was the landing screen I got - a clear choice between joining mastodn.social or joining another instance. With the second, you are forwarded to a list of instances, complete with search functionality.
Yes, this is obviously biased towards mastodon.social, but it's hardly a Microsoft-style monopoly. And what else are they supposed to do in the face of constant cries of "Mastodon is too complex to join!"?
The trademark alone gives Mastodon gGmbH huge power, it lets them tell any server using the word "mastodon" in its domain name what software or forks it can use.
And it's getting worse. Mastodon gGmbH is now making official apps which direct people to sign up on mastodon.social instead of a random trusted server or choice of trusted servers.
The more people sign up on mastodon.social, the more tempting Mastodon gGmbH becomes as a takeover target.
@feditips How does your grandmother know what a trusted server is, compared to mastodon.social? It's like everyone using Microsoft or Google for email. Choices are endless, but leaving too many choices for the users causes decision paralysis.
@feditips So, there's this social networking app called Mastodon, and people are surprised that many are flocking to mastodon.social instead of cat.turd (or whatever)?
@feditips
So in migrating here I had understood that a German techie rote the software we use and made it free to use. The beauty was it wasn’t owned by anyone & couldn’t be bought.
It sounds more like he kept some strings attached to the software & basically got others to shell out for expenses like servers, admins, maintenance etc, so that it becomes valuable without him putting up $$. My bubble is burst! #fediverse
@feditips To be fair, someone has to hold the Mastodon trademark, otherwise any (multi-billion dollar) company could step in and claim it.
"Linux" is also a trademarked term (owned by Linus or the Linux Foundation). They just decided to not care how anyone uses it but they have to have it in order to protect it.
@feditips It’s unlikely @Gargron would have an incentive to sell the gGmbH as it is a non-profit company. As far as I know it is only allowed to sell this kind of company at nominal value (the money the shareholders put into it).
@feditips I would be very interested to see a coherent explanation of the legal mechanism by which Mastodon gGmbh could meaningfully use its trademarks to prevent non-commercial use, even if it wanted to (which remains to be demonstrated), much less dictate terms on software forks.
This is a long time issue:. The left leaning digital, radio, TV, media has never been a profit center. This contrasted with RW media, from 1990s has been an emerging, evolving, growth industry.
2004, I proposed project institute to create the draw of people to common reality baseline, using various methods, capacity builders, etc.
➡️ IF mastodon.social becomes more than 50% of the Fediverse, either by total users or monthly active users, the rest of us should defederate it.
Sticking with mastodon.social because "that's where the people are" is pointless. Centralised growth will simply cause the governance problems we've seen on Twitter and Facebook to be replicated on here.
Growth has to be decentralised in order to protect the independence of all Fedi servers.
@feditips
I see your point but consider that (1) Mastodon accounts are portable and anyone can just move their account to another server and (2) there is nothing stopping corporations or MAGA extremists from setting up their own server and moving en masse to it to become the larger mastodon server. But, I believe users can block an entire instance, limiting their reach. So I think the defenses are there.
I just lost my 20k+ tweets on the #BorgSite. I'd hate to lose a similar number of #toots again.
In order to prevent your, alas not unlikely, scenario, migrating #toots/#posts would be my utmost priority regarding development.
Regarding the limited features on #Mastodon, I'd give #Akkoma a shot. This would possibly give the #Fediverse an additional boost, as the limited features on rival platforms are always an issue.
I hope that developers take notice of this scenario.
...who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand."
@feditips I think 50% is way too late. At that point if everyone else defederates, then going where there's the most community means going to mastodon.social rather than to the fediverse at large. If we're going to defederate to prevent over-centralisation, it should be at 1/4 or 1/3 of the fediverse, not 1/2.
@feditips while you are right about the danger, i dislike your suggestion, its just destructive.
also keep in mind that all this started out quite different than fb and the like, theres a very different mission from day one, its floss, its a Ggmbh (wich might even protect from selling out?).
yet dangers are there, but on a complete different level than twitter has always been!
i'm not a fan of the default-sever-move, too, but: i never understood the mastodon-is-so-difficult-people
Came across this one the other day. Not perfect, but very populated and groups in languages and has a few other parameters you can fiddle with to see if you find something tempting.
Personally, I have chosen a server in my own country to call home - because then it is much easier to give some financial support through reliable channels if needed.
That's not true. There are quite a few geographic #FediVerse sites for the U.K., ranging from Glasgow.Social through Mastodon.Scot to Toot.Wales. And those are the big ones. There are further smaller ones like Mastodon.London and Dorset.Social, and more that I won't name here because I know that they are one person hobby outfits and don't need the pressure.
Interestingly, a small number of U.K.-looking instances are not, and might be the very things that you'd want.
Mastodon.London is hosted in Germany.
Mastodon.Org.UK is in the Netherlands, according to @xvilo's blurb.
I'm not sure about Mastodon.UK.Com. It claims to be U.K.-hosted, but the about page says that French/German law applies. No clue from @root's user profile.
Hm, I just remembered something of the so-called EU's E-Commerce directive:
EU countries must provide a so-called imprint. An instance definitely is a "provider" in the sense of the directive. The directive sets the following minimum requirements in Article 5:
"(b) the geographic address at which the service provider is established;"
Failing to do so can be very costly, and there are...
I have not registered a URL in quite a while, but the owner or administrator of a country Top-Level Domain is usually a government agency or a government-appointed firm.
That organization could exert pressure on the URL "tenant", i.e. the person owning the (temporary) right of...
...use. Due to this, I, personally, would avoid any #TLD from a none-#EU country.
(I admit that as of today, this is overly cautious, but I am taking a worst-case scenario approach.)
As a second step, I have been told that the laws of the country where the server is physically based, are chiefly relevant.
...the remaining rent/ hosting space for the (usually) year, I'd hazards a guess that most hosing companies would let you leave right away, as they can re-let your space on the server.
My point being that there also is the (latent) risk of an instance owner switching the provider and thus possibly the country, too.
...pretty much doubt that any sensible instance-owner would leave the #GDPDR area, if based there initially, at this point, as this might entail a breech of contract with its users.
On the other hand, if the discussed directive for chat control comes into force, #Switzerland might be an option.
@kcsorenby@BentiGorlich@Crookedlilhouse@feditips are you trying to move from mstdn.social? its a separate server than mastodon.social and administrated by a completely independent team afaik, so i think youre okay if thats the intention.
@kainoa@feditips@edendestroyer@Crookedlilhouse@BentiGorlich well.. it’s me again🫣it appears like my sign up did not work.. I was sent verification to my email and pressed got it.. now it’s all just says processing.. and is a frozen screen🙄
@kcsorenby@feditips@edendestroyer@Crookedlilhouse@BentiGorlich yeah, for whatever reason your account is just showing as invalid in the database, probably a weird glitch... can you try registering with a different username? (if you want to use the same email, just add a +1 to the end of the name, i.e. myself+1@gmail.com)
@Crookedlilhouse@feditips hi mom! You could start shopping for a new home on the fediverse by looking at servers at fedi.garden, which I believe is run by the owner of fedi.tips, or https://joinmastodon.org/servers! You could even move your account (or make an alternate account) at pupy.cafe, which is the server I'm on, run by my pal Harriet. This isn't an ad for the pupy cafe; we aren't trying to grow, the point is there are lots of options!
@Crookedlilhouse@feditips to migrate your account to a new server, you're probably going to have to go to the web page for your account and sign in. For me, account migration is under Preferences > Profile. I've never tried messing with it
@nic@Crookedlilhouse@feditips Surprisingly, it really is just that easy. Create new account. Indicate it becomes your new main. Log into old account, tell it to redirect people (and followers and etc).
The whole thing just works, which was a pleasant surprise after many years in corporate America where software gets released because the suits decided they had to ship on 4/20 and no other day.
Surprising no one, lots of commercial software has the expected bugs that comes with that sort of paradigm around a deliverable. It can be crap, but it must ship as/when the non-technical folks in the C Suite decided it should ship.
There are Mastodon hosting servers where you pay them to host you (only some of them are accepting new people). Searching them can give a good idea of the general costs involved.
The minimum costs seems to be around the 6 euro range. Can be cheaper if you rent a server instead of using a hosting service.
It very much depends on your setup and resources. If you’re renting a virtual device there’s going to be increasing costs as your server grows, but if you own your hardware and use existing internet connections then that cost could be less.
It’s also what your aim is. Should it be a small server for you and maybe some friends? Or is it a general server for thousands of people? That will affect the cost.
@feditips But then nothing else really changes outside of that. He still owns the trademarks. The official apps still get people signing up on m.s preferentially. m.s becomes another corporate silo.
Sure, the rest of us would be rid of mastodon.social, but if that instance is really that big then all we've done is turn them into another birbsite, and then there's the rest of us.
Defederation isn't as big a threat as it sounds, because if m.s is that big, it's self sustaining. It doesn't actually need the rest of the Fediverse.
@drwho@feditips As drwho pointed out there's not much to be done in regard to trademark and official apps. Also doesn't this problem just become self-perpetuating for whatever instance is "biggest" sans the trademark stuff?
The only solution I see is that someone creates a fork, and brands it and sells it better than Mastodon has, but with more open trademark like CC rights or something. IDK who can do that, or how, though.
@feditips Respectfully, I am not sure this would have the effect you desire.
If the few try to silence the many, this often fails and they are in turn silenced. Witness the myriad open source projects that decide to fork and then simply die from lack of contributors.
@Natureshadow@feditips@Gargron Well, perhaps he is, but if so it was pretty silly of him to create a system that is spectacularly resistant to monopoly, no?
He took a system that was resistant to monopoly. He then designed a platform around it that is not interoperable, and gained market share with it. That then forced others to follow his decisions to take part in the system. Then, he made publicity for his platform, created a mobile app named after his platform, and now uses that to trick users into choosing his instance.
@Natureshadow@feditips@Gargron :sigh: He chose to implement the protocol. He could have used a different one. He implemented it in such a way that hundreds of servers sprang up. He didn't have to do that, either.
And, not interoperable? really? There are dozens of different programs in the fediverse. Some of them are literally designed as Mastodon replacements. They all talk to one another!
@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron Yep, exactly as I said. They all mimic Mastodon, not the actual standard protocol. If you want to be part of what you call the "Fediverse", you basically have two options:
a) implement ActivityPub following the standard, and not federate with Mastodon
b) reverse-engineer Mastodon and follow its proprietary dialect
@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron Yeah, continue believing that, then. Reality is that Mastodon does not implement ActivityPub in an interoperable way, and others copy its bugs and deviations.
The “Eugen is evil” trope is beyond boring nowadays, annoyingly repetitive and sloppy research on what he (+team/users) built.
I disagree with the growth of mega instances because they are “too big to block” but I can just say my arguments and then see whether it becomes something to act on.
Why is this so difficult for some, why does there have to be drama and character assassination?
@chris@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron It is about far more than instance size, it is about pushing proprietary protocols. I see you haven't read (or understood) the facts.
Mastodon is pushing proprietary protocols, and with its size, forcing them on others. That is a fact. You can personally find that good or bad as you wish, but the fact's a fact.
@Natureshadow@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron
There are some disagreements about some details of AP on the fediverse. This always is the case with (open) protocols(http,smtp,html,rss/atom), this is normal, nothing is static.
If you see more in this you could write down your criticism en detail technically or point to a source that does it in a way you agree on.
I have only tinkered with the protocol for a while because I have an idea for static blogs (project n+1) but I may miss sth.
@chris@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron Ah, no. Mastodon does also break the core spec where there is no room for interpretation, e.g. it can only handle a small subset of JSON documents allowed by the spec. And it uses its own schema, while not publishing the schema, and knowingly breaking other implementations by making the schema URI unresolvable. Most of it could be trivially fixed without changing anything for Mastodon itself.
@chris@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron When talking to other servers, it uses the wrong content type, while the spec clearly defines a content type that MUST be used. It is a long-standing issue in Mastodon, and everyone else has to patch their implementations instead. That's related to the issue with the JSON subset, but in itself quite annoying.
@chris@fishidwardrobe@feditips@Gargron You can go through this kind of issues in various issue trackers, and you will find surprisingly many reactions along the lines of "well, if you want to talk to Mastodon, do as we say, we won't fix it".
On top of that, #Mastodon deliberately breaks #ActivityPub specs, and refuses to fix that. It can already be observed that, instead of forcing Mastodon to be interoperable, other projects start breaking their implementations to please Mastodon instead due to its market power.
@feditips@tchambers with mastodon.social if it grows over 50% of the total Fediverse's MAU is good advice IMO. Waiting until a possible buy-out is a little late to make a statement.
@feditips did mastodon.social reopen registrations again? Because the "create account" button on their site doesn't do anything. Is it only through the app?
Also, I feel that if any VC's decide to muscle in they'll go after ActivityPub like Google did with Android and Chromium. Makes them immune to defederation.
There's also the fact that while mastodon.social has grown substantially I don't think it's going to beat the coming corporate offerings in terms of actual marketshare
@feditips I don’t disagree with you, but I don’t think you’re going change herd behavior, particularly given the fact that people will have a tendency to congregate where the news gathers. The Fediverse is good for generating new systemization. I think we need to see what develops.
@eniko@brianvastag@feditips But why mislead people into thinking you are about "fedi-tips", when all you talk about is mastodon. No post on pleroma, peertube, friendica etc.
@feditips Doesn’t a buyout also require a sellout? Can I ask why you assume Rochko and his org are so likely to do this? You’re looking at it as an inevitability, but I can’t see how you know with certainty what the future will bring?
@feditips Es ist doch so, dass man zuerst bei mastodon.social eincheckt und wenn man sich aklimatisiert hat auf einen passenden Server wechselt. So habe ich das gelesen. Viele machen ja bei Mastodon nicht weiter, weiil sie es mühsamer als Twitter finden.
Der Ansatz ergibt insofern Sinn, da viele schon vor dem Einstieg, durch die Suche nach einem passenden Server, völlig überfordert sind.
Probably a lot more of mastodon.social accounts are junk than you realize, come visit our local timeline, lol.
The app leans into a default server because it's the top reason people just... don't join the fediverse at all. Server choice is hard, and we should onboard people and then convince them to move.
Medium, Flipboard, Facebook's P92, etc. will absolutely dwarf anything Eugen controls as they grow into the fediverse.
@feditips I only joined a different server because the main mastadon one was not accepting new users at the time. This whole fediverse thing is somewhat mysterious to me. How can one server dictate conditions to other servers?
@miasmo@feditips
Just a simple example of a common practice.
Let's say server A has banned server B
Server C has not banned server B
Server A banns server C because of not banning server B.
That way, server A forces server D,E,F,.... to either ban server B and C, or they'll also get banned.
Just like how US sanctions work.
That's something that is already being done by major servers. It just gonna get much worse.
@feditips I think that if there was any mention of selling the domain, a large number of users would move elsewhere. That's the advantage of a federated approach. So suddenly the deal wouldn't seem so profitable.
@feditips
People go where they want to go. It’s our choice for our reasons.
What I hear in your statement resonates not of growth based upon freedom of choice; but rather, intimates manipulation and control. It’ll sort itself out as it will; and that, as I see it, is the whole point.
I see your point, but man things sure can get a bit paradoxical. Ain’t that just like life?
✌️
@feditips Does this mean that as each Server grows to a certain point we will need to de-federate with it as well? Wont we see more and more islands with no connectivity to each other if this happens?
I feel like 50% (or even 40%) might be too late and too big to change. We should try to wait for 20% or 30% before defederating.
Would it be a good idea to make a website for instances to pledge to defederate when mastodon.social reaches the target threshold to defederate, and also to create early visable pressure?
@feditips If everyone is on one server it would be like all of the internet being served by one company. It's power is in the fact that no one company controls a majority of the servers. If you create your account on a different server you can still follow an account reading elsewhere.
@feditips ok so I’m with mastodon.social just because after much delay, trial and error I managed to create an account there. I haven’t a clue about how to change instances and given the time it took to get going and that I’ve invested in getting settled here, I don’t want to be told ‘start again’ just because you perceive my instance to be ‘too popular’. I can’t be the only one in this position?
@feditips Defederating a server just because it's popular is saying "I don't want to receive emails from Google or Microsoft", which is just crazy sounding.
For providing tips on how to use Mastodon and the Fediverse, you're actively leveraging your platform to spread opinions and propaganda, removing your status of being purely an informational service to the community.
Defederating a server just because it's popular is saying "I don't want to receive emails from Google or Microsoft", which is just crazy sounding.
An interesting comparison to make amongst this very switched-on technically-minded community. As one of the low-mid range 'techy' denizens of the F'verse I don't actually want emails from MS or Google, and I can't imagine I'm alone in that. They've long since lost my trust and apart from Android I'm untethered from the rest of Google and completely from MS.
This looks to be a similar issue. They've chosen a path of very high risk which, if not properly handled, could be catastrophic. I'm of the opinion the Fediverse could survive without Mastodon but it would be at a far reduced scale and the reputational damage any large scale severance would cause could be immense.
As for this accounts' remit...warnings about potential threats to the Fediverse do count as 'tips', from a certain point of view.
@Uraael@feditips The point is blacklisting large providers means losing out on potential communication and it harms the users of that instance, due to that centralizes admins decisions. Instances would defederate mastodon.social, and then there will be instances who defederate others who defederate mastodon.social, creating blackholes or "islands" in a decentralized network.
@mrhamel@feditips You're right: I agree totally. Any severance action will be very harmful, in the short term at least. But I think we should at least be talking about that as an option against what also could be very very dangerous if we allow one server to grow and over-shadow the rest of the Fediverse.
I mean, we're talking not just about corporate buyouts but about actual Nazi powers - those guys I've been watching war movies about for 40+ years - now looking to exert control, conquer and divide. They'll be looking at gGmbh's actions and licking their lips.
@Uraael@feditips An instance can be big in size but not know about it if it wasn't in your face everywhere, and you wouldn't be scared about it because ignorance is bliss. Your feelings of being scared are what gives you the "over-shadow" feeling. When you think about yourself as a tiny dot across the Fediverse, the majority of ActivityPub network wouldn't give two shits.
@Uraael@feditips I grasped that every decentralized system has a centralized authority over it. ICANN for example, handles domain name TLDs and delegations of AS numbers and IP blocks, which further delegate down to various for-profit and non-profit entities.
You can be on your soapbox spreading fear of uncertainty, I'll be moving on with my life having a grand time.
It's basic Project Management. You need to assess your risks up-front and honestly before you can start to plan effectively. Pretending threats don't exist is wilful blindness.
@Uraael@feditips@mrhamel You might have missed the point. Blocking Google or Microsoft not only stops those companies from emailing you, but all the users who use their platform for Gmail or Outlook.
@stickus@feditips@mrhamel No, that was implied in my response. Still happy to do that given both services slurp data from my replies to their emails. You want to contact me, use a less toxic email service.
@mrhamel The concern isn't really "just because it's popular" but if you'd like to stick with the email server metaphor, suppose there's a domain that constantly sends spam and phishing attempts to your email service, to the point where the risk to the users in your domain is large enough to override accepting emails from it.
The analogy isn't perfect because we don't expect email providers to police attacks from their users, but that IS what has already happened on mastodon.social.
@mrhamel I've only been here a few months and have already seen multiple examples of smaller instances defederating from M.S because their users were harassed and M.S didn't take the moderating actions necessary to protect their users from abuse. This is not a hypothetical, this is going on now, and as Mastodon is funneling new signups from its app to grow M.S even further, it will be even harder to moderate effectively than it is currently.
@ceremus That comes with the popularity of any social media instance. If it grows so big (regardless of how), the amount of upkeep grows with it. Not responding to abuse complaints is very different from not responding adequately.
Let me ask you this, if you get spam from hundreds of Gmail addresses, are you going to filter out Google as a whole? Very highly unlikely. I'd rather Mastodon and/or ActivityPub get much finer spam controls added.
@mrhamel Again, there is no point in asking the hypothetical "but would you REALLY block gmail/microsoft/mastodon.social?" Instances have already been doing this. The abuse coming from users on that server and the lack of moderation on M.S's behalf was bad enough for them to take the nuclear option.
@ceremus Antispam daemons would automatically filter each email as necessary based on words, heuristics, domain, whole From address, etc. Some are dropped, some go to a spam folder, all depends on how bad it really is. Mastodon does not have the same fine grain controls as email.
@mrhamel As said, the metaphor is not perfect, nor is it the point. The mechanisms to protect users from abuse on SM platforms are as different from email as they are complex, and effective moderation is a central pillar of it.
M.S's moderation has shown to be lacking (I've even seen users in this thread attesting to that), and auto-directing new signups to make it larger will inevitably worsen that problem.
@feditips For now, I'm mostly on mastodon.social for the "explore" feature, which is often empty on smaller instances. I did get an account on a different server though and I think I will move at some point in the future.
@feditips This seems a bit arbitrary. Defederating based on size rather than actual violations seems counter to the purpose of decentralization, and more isolating to the smaller servers without true indictments.
Defederating based on actual purchases/takeovers might be warranted if that were to happen, but just being able to easily move to another server is something that exists today that does not in the case of Twitter, etc.
If then Mastodon organization is ever taken over, we can all move to other instances without great loss. The instance should only be defederated if its policies change significantly.
@feditips we should not be absolutist. A network cannot grow without some degree of centralization. I got booted out of my instance because they didn't like US news so I ended up on one on the bigger instances. If you remove even those, people will just give up. Many users need convenience.
@feditips I may be using Mastodon incorrectly but I tried out 4-5 diff servers and wasn’t really finding any chatter until I finally joined mastodon.social and suddenly I’m seeing a lot more interesting people and more people are showing up when I search. If I move again I want to know I’ll still be able to access as many threads
@feditips Or, you know, you could wait for your worst-case scenario to actually happen rather than say "This thing that might be bad could happen in these circumstances so let's take drastic action right now to head off this theoretical possibility."
@feditips lol. defederating it is just gonna create the problem you are fearing COULD happen, but isn't gonna happen for sure. self-sabotage (because of fear) you can call it.
Worst idea ever. I'm not gonna defederate here on my instance.
@anders@feditips Imagine running Fedi.Tips, presumably to help acclimate new users to the fediverse, and simultaneously advocating for gatekeeping 50% of mastodon users out of said fediverse because they weren’t fediverse-savvy enough to sign up on a cool instance. This is about the most user-hostile suggestion I can possibly imagine? Does Fedi.Tips think everyone on mastodon.social is a Rochko sock puppet? Is the irony of this retaliatory suggestion completely lost?
It makes a lot of sense to start talking about what is required of platforms to be considered good fediverse citizens.
AFAIK, both Pixelfed and Lemmy actively encourage people to diversify into multiple servers.
Without a good set of ideas around what’s required, and why, it’s pretty meaningless to just get upset and predict nightmare scenarios. You need thought out principles and consequences.
This is probably the only strategy that would work, but at 50% you're way too late. At that point, network effects plus the huge control over the ecosystem as you describe lets them just say "pff, go ahead, don't need you".
I think 20% would be a much better target - and I realize it's getting close now.
Maybe I should write a bot that just posts instructions on how to move your account to an independent instance, and point it at hashtags related to mastodon.social...
@feditips This is a ridiculous suggestion. Fracturing the fediverse over a completely arbitrary benchmark is like burning a village in order to save it. I've been happy on this server for many years. Except for a few hiccups it has been stable and available, I am happy with the moderation, and the users are friendly and well disposed to follow (and boost) accounts on other servers. That you would want to block my access to other users over your theoretical concerns is maddening.
@feditips Good points here. I was on a small niche server that closed down so I moved to the bigger mas.to server to avoid that happening again. I do miss having a local feed based around a topic, so I might try to find a medium size server.
Why not, instead of defederation, introduce a rate limit? .. let's say, just x% of all msgs exchanged may be exchanged with a single instance. This will have to grow organically and may make users move to other instances if a central one suddenly feels unwell ...
@feditips I see a lot of people complaining that Mastodon adoption is limited by its complexity. It's a valid criticism in itself, but I feel that too many people fail to understand that the complexities are a deliberate design choice, because simplicity is a facade for empire and domination.
Computers and communication are inherently complex, and apparent simplicity means you're being deceived and manipulated.
@philheppenstall@feditips There are certainly a lot of improvements that could be made to the onboarding process.
But I think the improvement should involve explaining federation more clearly, and making it easier to compare instances and choose one.
The complaint I see too often is that there's more than one Mastodon instance. Choosing which instance to use is an important decision, not a design flaw.
@foolishowl@philheppenstall@feditips I’ve been the guy that argued “let’s just explain it better” or “users just need better instruction”. But it doesn’t work that way for many people; they have (better) things to worry about in their lives, and choosing a social network instance to join may not sound as fun as just joining a social network to interact with people.
A proper goal IMO is to squash the learning curves rather than increase documentation.
@feditips I'm on mastodon.social and I completely agree with you. I hope a significant number of others on this instance will join in and tell Rochko & Co that this isn't OK. No one wants this.
@feditips Advocating to defederate mastodon.social is not good. You're fearmongering about some dystopian fantasy you fear may happen.
If a big company wants to "take over" as Twitter 2.0, they'll just do it-they don't have to buy m.s., which is teensy compared to what their size would be.
If fediverse keeps growing, there will be more and larger servers. Should we defederate from every one that gets "too big" and fragment the fediverse?
@feditips This is a very important thought: what if mastodon.social and the legal entity behind it become an ever-larger percentage of the #Fediverse? When do we need to say "stop"? And how do we say "stop"?
@jalcine@feditips I don't think defederate works. If something is 50% of a network, and you cut, #metcalfe's law says the value for the entire network goes down by 75%. People aren't going to do that.
Possible alternatives:
Split the server, with rule that no one entity can have administrative control over > X% of the network.
Cut the server lose from a non-democratic entity (even if it is a for-benefit corp as it is) and turn it user managed.
@jalcine@feditips Actually my math is wrong. Metcalfe's Law says that the value of the network goes down by 50% from the perspective of each node in the network. The value of each partitioned half is down by 75%, together the two separated halves have 50% of the value of the previously connected network. Sorry 'bout that.
(And of course, Metcalfe's law only deals with back-of-the-envelope averages, so it may be more or less for specific people and communities.)
@feditips IMO if @Gargron (and Mastodon GmbH) believes in the principles of federation they should stop accepting users into mastodon.social and encourage signups on other instances.
OP is wrong, yes. There is no reason to defederate anyone except for SPAM or illegal material. If it’s stuff you don’t like, that’s just kinda pathetic. Even defeding mastodon.social because it’s too big is dumb.
There is a big world outside of Mastodon, and a lot of people are on Pleroma/Misskey/etc. If Gargamel decides to take the official stuff private, that’s totally allowed. He can drop federation and make his setup a totally closed system, just like Truth social. He’ll have to rewrite all our contributions to get it out of the GPL, but he could also just gut all federation and keep it FOSS, forcing forks. Honestly, that’s all a stretch. He will probably find ways to make more money off of it, but it will be a while before it grows to the point he’s willing to alienate the community.
But @stephenjudkins is also wrong. You don’t care about federation, but I assure you, the vast majority of fediverse admins do. It’s literally what makes this network different from the big tech players.
@djsumdog@feditips fediverse admins are a tiny fraction of mastodon users, who are a small fraction of potential social media users. Actual devotion to federation as a principle is negligible
maybe you see it that way now, with the massive influx from everywhere else, but I assure you that in 2019, federation among all users was a big deal; and it still is on many many parts of the fedi.
Without those people, none of what you're using would exist. All of us will still be here creating new things long after the new influx of rage quitting idiots find their next big thing.
@djsumdog@feditips your problem here is you assign a huge amount of weight to the idiosyncratic opinions of the tiny number of people who were around back then
> of the tiny number of people who were around back then
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Dude, it seems like you've at least had an account since 2018. Did you just never use it? I assure you it was not a "tiny number of people" ... you might think that compared to today, but you're also still on the largest instance out there which blocks nearly half of the fediverse.
You get out onto this side of fedi and it's a totally different world. Federation makes that possible. Okay, I'll concede maybe this influx of new users doesn't care, but as they are all trying different servers, whether they care or not is irrelevant. Federation is the essential backbone of the entire fediverse ... and the people who make the fediverse even possible, do very much care. None of this would exist, or will continue to exist, without the people who care about federation.
@djsumdog@feditips you're basically proving my point about the weird, preachy, particular mastodon users who care about a bunch of stuff besides talking to interesting people and mitigating harassment
@feditips
When I joined, I spent half an hour trying to find a server that suited me and couldn't find one. That's why I chose social.
If choosing a server doesn't become much simpler, there is no way the direction will change.
p.s. Today I've had several people telling me that VCs would never make an offer for Mastodon gGmbH. But according to Eugen, "more than five" offers have already been made.
Here's what Eugen said in an interview with the Financial Times in December 2022:
"Rochko told the FT he had received offers from more than five US-based (venture capital) investors to invest 'hundreds of thousands of dollars' in backing the product, following its fast growth."
@feditips this 🧵 is a good heads up on the VC issue (threat).
This is what I’m here for: “Mastodon’s independence, and the choice of moderation styles across its servers, [are] part of its attraction”. I’m on Spoutible 🐳, too, trying out both as alternatives to 🐦. I like both, but there’s definitely a positive creative and independent vibe here that is different from a monolithic “central server”.
@feditips
I remember vividly, when the founders of WhatsApp told us, that they will not sell, but then they sold to Zuckerberg and WA rotted into the corporate Mega Hive of FB.
Everybody has a prize. At one point one will offer said prize and Mastodon as it is stops to exist.
@feditips Only one solution here : raise the drawbridge, close the gate, forbid any account creation, and then engage the Purge of those whose commitment to Sparkle Motion could be in doubt. Only once Mastodon is Pure again will it be reopened as the most friendly, open and accepting social media.
@feditips No, we didn't tell you that VCs wouldn't make an offer. It's that Mastodon as a non-profit gGmbH wouldn't be able to accept it. Please take a look at the legal requirements that exist for gGmbHs. They are not the same as for a (for-profit) GmbH.
can Mastodon gGmbH be bought like a GmbH company? I am not German so I dont know what are the specificities of this status
Why wasn't Mastodon built via some sort of nonprofit organization instead of a company? How was this even accepted by the community at the time?
If the reason for the project owner was to get revenue from his creation, why the usage of cooperative-like company used? (I don't know if that exists in Germany so if it doesn't that could answer my question)
@clement@feditips gGmbH is essentially a non-profit organization (every profit must be used for the charitable project, and may not be distirbuted to shareholders). The only other option as a real non-profit would be an e.V. (association), but that can make it really really hard to do business
@buerviper @feditips but then a gGmbH, given it has shareholders, can be bought, right?
Sorry for the dumb question but non profits getting bought seems odd to me (I don't even think it even is possible in France because non profits don't have shareholders here).
Also, "non profit" and "business" terms seem incompatible to me but I am maybe too much naive :-) I know there are shady stuff going on with some foundations in the US but I never heard such thing in Europe.
@clement@feditips a typical case of a non-profit that does "business" (employ people, buy stuff etc) would be hospitals and kindergartens, which are probably the most common examples of gGmbH here.
And yeah, in principle Eugen could sell his shares of the ggmbh (AFAIK he's the only shareholder).
One risk which concerns me is a "catch and kill" from Facebook, Twitter, or Trump's "Truth Social."
Mastodon.social being sold is one thing. Not good, but survivable.
Mastodon gGmbH or its assets such as the code being bought means serious problems.
Calling having independent federated servers an "ideology" rather than an essential feature, talking VC talk about "onboarding process" and so on, I think the ship has already sailed.
Leaving mastodon.social is the best early response
@Henry Edward Hardy As a U.S. citizen, you may not know this, but: A gGmbH is a non-profit with no stocks to be bought. By German law, it cannot be bought out. Mastodon gGmbH is registered in Germany, and thus, German laws and only German laws apply.
Everyone from U.S. startups to techbros to Silicon Valley gigacorps will try to buy Mastodon gGmbH out. They will all fail. Eugen Rochko accepts neither VC, and he's being offered VC from U.S. techbros all the time and turns them down again and again, nor buy-out offers. Besides, as I've said, buying out a gGmbH is illegal in Germany, and any attempt ends up null and void. And with no stocks to acquire, nothing to buy against Eugen's will, hostile takeovers aren't even possible.
@0xDEADBEEF@feditips
on point 1, People don't like to move. they pick something and try to stick with it. That's why many still use Facebook, regardless of all the scandals.
on point 2, #Facebook wasn't a corporation at the beginning either.
I see many people say what if #Mastodon is sold to a corporation. But not about what if mastodon becomes a corporation, which is much more likely.
I don't think Eugene would sell Mastodon. He does however seem like a guy who turn it into another Facebook.
@pauliehedron@feditips Thank you! I was stunned by all this fact-ignoring alarmism in the replies. Everyone seems to have an opinion without even checking the basic facts.
Please stop spreading panic about the uncertain future of #fediverse, and blaming one of it's creators/platforms for the downfall.
If you know anything about the #openSource, is that it can't be bought.
The true danger comes from the #bigTech (closed) platforms joining fediverse.
They can (ab)use their money to attract more people to those platforms, than all of the open source platforms combined.
@feditips why don't the folks who run mastodon.social close it for new registrations? Then it wouldn't continue to grow disproportionately faster than the other instances. Why are they motivated to keep growing, despite it being an obvious risk for the reason you pointed out?
@feditips The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more people are likely to use it.
Like it or not, most users don't care about the theoretical implications of using a technology; they care about the practical ones.
If users are afraid of centralization, then they can choose any other server.
If they don't care, then directing them to one main server is an excellent solution.
The people who disagree with this are just staunchly against centralization of any kind and want everyone to be like them
@feditips
Honestly, the app and joinmastodon should default to your nearest regional server with a dropdown listing other servers (regional servers can include which country, state/prov(opt), city(opt) they service in the backend).
And under that dropdown could be a list of tags of interests you could tap-to-check that would allow it to suggest interest-based servers (interest-based servers can include a list of interest tags).
@feditips Good heavens — how did mastodon.social suddenly become an evil menace, and Eugen some kind of villain? It seems to me you’ve spun out a dystopian fantasy of how things might go bad, and now you’re whipping up public alarm over that fantasy, as though it were really happening. But it’s not! The fediverse is growing and thriving. New communities are being spawned and existing ones are growing in reach and vitality. We can thank, among others, @Gargron for a lot of that.
But you might be missing the value proposition for that theoretical buyer.
They wouldn’t buy the instance without some value that makes the purchase worthwhile to them, and the ability for users to move to other instances should they provide a poor experience after the purchase is yet more reason that they wouldn’t make the purchase for bad reasons.
On the other hand, if a VC buys a major instance and provides a better experience for users, well more power to them!
A purchase is not necessarily a bad thing.
A purchase can also provide resources and leadership that can work for users too.
@feditips
It's science fiction sceario, but even so… what can we do in this case? We can simply move to another instance, and ask Mr Melon if he want to buy our accounts again.
@feditips If the official/default app has to "recommend" a server for some reason, it should do so for the purpose of spreading users out, not piling them on one "preferred" server. (As far as I can tell so far with my limited experience, it makes no significant difference what server your account is on.)
@feditips That’s bad faith. People reported that choosing a server was a big hurdle. I don’t see the problem in making it easier to join the broader experience and playing on advanced mode later. More services are good for federated sm, and if mastodon is the only one going forward, it’s not them to blame.
@feditips if it were easier to migrate to other instances instead of the long and convoluted process now in place, that might take the strain off the main instance-but it is difficult to change instances, and while there is a map of all of them available, some of them are not open to new users.
TL;DR: make it easier to move your home base to another.
Add comment