Centralisation of communications media is an extremely powerful force.
The typical remediation for centralization is regulated public utilities is breaking up a monopoly into a cartel of 3-5 local monopolies.
Also not great.
We are participating here at a very rare occurrence of decentralisation.
For everyone who thinks this is important for our lives and for the world, it is incumbent on all of us to build structures now that hold this ground as the federation grows.
I highly recommend the excellent book "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu.
It details the initial decentralization, followed by centralization and monopoly, of various media from telegrams to film, radio, tv, telephones, cable TV, and the Internet.
It's a fascinating read, and well worth your time.
One of the big mistakes people make, over and over again, is relying on technological determinism.
That is, thinking the architecture of the technology will preserve the topology of the network.
Mastodon is Open Source. It's built with open standards.
This is necessary but not sufficient to keep the network decentralized.
We're going to need social and legal structures, plus cultural norms, that counterbalance Metcalfe's law, which pushes the network towards centralization.
I do agree that centralization is coming to the fediverse, but not for any of the reasons that most people on here think. That centralization is coming for the exact same reasons that centralization came to email, and it's a reason that many folks that would like things to stay decentralised keep ignoring.
And that is user safety.
A lot of Mastodon fans keep pretending that Mastodon is inclusive. It's not. But it could be.
As a Black person, simply signing up for a Mastodon account can expose you to vile racist slurs and threats of violence. Most Mastodon users are one popular toot away from discovering that their instance mods are either unwilling or completely unprepared to deal with this.
Because a centralized whitelist was abused in a cynical attack years ago, the fediverse kinda gave up on that idea, and has been very resistant to it ever since.
It's entirely possible for decentralized instances to provide safety, but most don't/won't. I'm super happy with hachyderm.io for example. ♥️👍🏿
But a larger company is going to integrate with the fediverse, and fulfill the most basic user feature request: "As a user of your product, I would like to know that signing up will not expose me to death threats from nazis" 🤷🏿♂️
Then more new users are going to flow there.
The best thing to do to "counter" this coming centralization is super easy to do, but from my short time observing here, it won't happen:
1. There should be stricter criteria for an instance being listed on "join Mastodon." Insufficient moderation gets you de-listed. Handle cynical false reports.
2. It should be easier for a new admin to just check a box and opt-in to a whitelisted federation that excludes the worst instances.
Personally I care a lot more about user safety than decentralization. I care about decentralization as it pertains to user safety, product innovation, and inclusion. Which is why for the day job, I choose jobs where I can make sure that small companies compete and win against the big company I'm at. This creates a healthier world, and works better for everyone.
But I don't value decentralization for decentralization's sake.
There's increasing evidence that good moderation just doesn't scale well. Having a mod to user ratio of under 1 to 1000 seems ideal. There's all the opportunity for decentralized social to be safer than centralized. And we're squandering it.
By funneling marginalized users to big instances like mastodon.cloud and mastodon.social, letting them experience horrible abuse, and then blocking them for not using CW when they ask for help.
@evan @markallerton @ks It's ironic and sad that we're seeing the biggest spikes in fediverse adoption in history precisely because users are fleeing a centralized network that is becoming less safe... and yet we still don't acknowledge that for social networks, safety is the P0 feature.
Yes, the fediverse is safer for some users than centralized social networks, and I'm truly happy for them. But for other users, it is much less safe.
The analogy that several Black users have said, is "Mastodon is the digital equivalent of fleeing 'regular' racism in the deep South, just to experience 'racism doesn't happen here!' racism in Boston." 🙂🙃
Mastodon has more cultural norms around not talking about racist abuse, than around preventing it from happening. I don't know how to convince y'all that this is bad.
So yeah, this creates an opening for centralizers.
@corvusbrimstone @sinclairinat0r @mekkaokereke @markallerton @ks it's a common thread from American history. Southern states called upon a principle of "states' rights" to justify their resistance to abolition of slavery and universal civil rights.
The analogy with the fediverse is that we have devolved power from central entities to smaller ones with consequent problems of user safety.
Evan Prodromou
ks
Mark Allerton
mekka okereke 
Jeremy Sinclair #ฺNET
Cynde
Saint Baal-MAŠ
Thornbill9
Disco Sexual