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.
@mveron Caveat: if they're a non-profit or a volunteer.
Give no donations to instances run by for-profits.
@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.
Chris Trottier
Marc Véron
byte
dr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧
Thomas H Jones II
Tony Stubblebine
Patrick McLaughlin