@juanof9

With that framing, the solution becomes clearer.

A #NetworkEffect can be good! More users of a system makes the system more useful, and that's fine!

But a #SwitchingCost is undesirable (except to monopolists), and always to be minimised.

We need to force these systems, by muscular regulation if necessary, to allow anyone to walk away *and* keep on communicating seamlessly with their friends left inside.

High network effects, *and* low switching costs. We can do it!

@pluralistic

@juanof9

As enumerated in various places by @pluralistic, a #SwitchingCost can be all kinds of things.

Your data can't be exported because it's in a proprietary format.

Your existing adapters don't work with competing products.

Or, very widespread today: Your existing contacts are all still inside the system and can't seamlessly follow you outside, so you'd need to lose them.

The users "hold each other hostage" merely by being there, because the system refuses to be interoperable.

@juanof9 I like the distinction expressed by @pluralistic:

A #NetworkEffect can help a system *grow*. Every new user makes the system more valuable, and more attractive to more new users.

But that's how users *come inside*. It's not what *traps* users inside the system.

Rather, a #SwitchingCost is anything you must lose when you switch away.

With high switching costs, a system can become *really* crappy before people pay the cost to leave. And so that's what traps people inside.

As thorny as this is, it's even harder when we're talking about #SocialMedia, because it's *social*. Sociability adds a new and pernicious #SwitchingCost, when we hold each other hostage because we can't agree on when/whether to go, and if we do, where to go next. When the management of your community goes septic, it can be hard to leave, because you have to leave behind the people who matter to you if you do.

4/

@sprigden This is certainly something a teen in the family should try to do; and yes, this is an important point of both #Federation and #FreeSoftware, putting this capability in the hands of small communities for their own empowerment.

The technical ability to set up a Mastodon instance, though, is less of a challenge than meeting the #SwitchingCost: how to get *all* the family to use that instance. If that doesn't happen, family members likely will just stay where everyone else already is.