BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired.
The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, a business that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space.
If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html
Like it or not, it should no longer be assumed that "volunteers" are running your instances.
The Mask Group, which now runs three large instances "has raised over US$50 million from private and institutional backers"—their words not mine.
There's going to be a massive land grab of all these big instances. There will be lots of merging and acquiring too.
My advice is that you all become *very* aware of who owns your instance and why.
Get to know your admins—make sure their values align with your own.
If you don't want to put your social media life in the hands of strangers, then self-host your own instance.
To everyone using mastodon.cloud and mstdn.jp: remember, you're not locked into those instances.
If you want, you can migrate elsewhere.
This is not Twitter—you have a choice regarding where your home will be on the Fediverse.
A warning: there's going to be a concerted effort to re-centralize the Fediverse.
As we've just seen with the acquisition of pawoo.net, that's already happening.
What are you going to do to thwart this trend?
@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.
@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.
@atomicpoet @gisiger also what Chris is doing is promoting situational awareness—which is key.
@rob The instances that have gone bad have lasted for a very long time.
Technology does not replace human moderation.
@rob With all do respect, the Musk problem can not only happen on Mastodon, it has happened.
You might want to look into a few more instances.
I was about to say that. A very popular Mastodon instance that progressives jumped to over the past couple years did just that. They are defederated, also.
It has over 30k users and growing for a few years. It's an echo chamber, too. Default Mastodon features, like a public facing user profile page, is a premium upgrade.
@rob @atomicpoet That's a very naive stance. If you think bad things can't happen here, you probably wont be careful or vigilat and then they WILL happen.
Those "two button presses" can just be disabled. The instance can do stuff to attract many users and then just change the protocol step by step.
It's not the first time that would happen. And ignoring that threat won't just make it go away.
@Glatorius @atomicpoet I don't believe it is naive at all. The proof point of a functional ecosystem is that it will develop a diverse range of funding options for operators from: "gift to the community", through "Mastodon blue", through to Fb style "we sell all your data". Maybe some innovative stuff involving micropayments to post/read as well, and the web 3.0 folks have something useful to contribute here.
It is practically a certainty in my mind that some instance somewhere will disable aliasing to prevent migrations away when they perceive that is in their narrow short term commercial interests.
There are also, as others have said embrace/extend/extinguish vulnerabilities inherent in any any open protocol.
How other instance operators respond to these things will define how things go long term.
Everything in my power to end capitalism because capitalism ruins everything
Just saw this post and can assure that my post was a coincidence.
But then again I do post about hating capitalism most days.
I'm sick of people saying it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of #capitalism. I think about the end of capitalism every day. Today I imagined what it would be like to live in a community that valued me for being present rather than "useful" or "productive." In that world, I think I would spend a lot more time taking care of plants. I would tell stories when I felt like it, instead of on deadline. What do you imagine? #imaginetheendofcapitalism
@atomicpoet If they could buy those instances, that's also because they were for sale.
Migration is gonna be difficult for Japanese users. Who's going to run a new Japanese instance that could welcome ~1.2 million users? (if there's really 1.2m active users, Pawoo kind of cheated on this)
Also they all run on an obsolete version of Mastodon (namely 3.3 or 3.4) so no automatic migration.
Pawoo is even a fork that was heavily patched at a time were a lot of features weren't available. They were #1 in creating new features when they were owned by Pixiv.
@mveron Caveat: if they're a non-profit or a volunteer.
Give no donations to instances run by for-profits.
I guess Vivaldi is because it's available as part of the subscription so it could well be a loss leader feature. I don't see a financial relationship with mastodon.cloud or its owners, I've no idea about twit.
Would you say the same about masto.host or any other instance hosting company?
@davidr @atomicpoet @mveron I specifically asked how a mastodon instance can be used currently to directly profit off its users.
Those are walled-garden services that you have no option but to use if you want access to the platform.
If my current mastodon instance tries to monetize me, I can just move and still have the same overall access to the platform. That's the benefit of federation, and why the Fediverse isn't comparable to those platforms.
@byte @atomicpoet @mveron You can move right now. What if they decide to make that hard? Make exporting your data impossible or accessible only via arcane menus and paperwork?
"But the protocol!" Look at email and Microsoft. Once an organization starts using Exchange/Outlook, there's no way to use anything else.
@davidr @atomicpoet @mveron How could they make it hard? https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/accounts/#followers The API endpoint for followers is public. The API can achieve anything the front-end could, and that also means I could use third-party apps (like https://movetodon.org/) to use those functions that could've been obscured by my instance.
Outlook, Gmail and other competitors are much more than just e-mail now. There's an entire suite there, email being a miniscule part of it. Changing your email provider is relatively easy assuming you have your own domain, it's all the other stuff that is hard.
But unlike those services that are built almost entirely on private infrastructure, Mastodon is entirely the ActivityPub protocol.
@byte @atomicpoet @mveron I fave'd a post this very morning from someone who said they "finally" got IMAP working with Outlook365.
This is how these companies make money--breaking protocols just enough to keep people captured. They are *good* at it. And when someone figures out how to handle it, they break it again.
@coachtony @byte @davidr @atomicpoet @mveron
Pay for doesn’t (have to) equal “a for profit owns it.”
This is where non-profits should be spun up.
@atomicpoet I imagine that as Mastodon now is in the spotlight as a potential Twitter replacement, certain entities will see an opportunity to carve out power, profit, and influence by acquiring instances and centralising power.
Chris Trottier
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