Chris TrottierDec 21, 2022

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

Yahooist Teil der Yahoo Markenfamilie

Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022

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.

Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022

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.

Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022

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.

Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022

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?

Show threadTobias HorvathDec 21, 2022
@atomicpoet The biggest issue with federation is trust. Unless smaller instances market themselves as trustworthy, barely any new users will pick them. Many small instance admin teams are anonymous random people. This doesn't help. The biggest instances benefit from "everyone I know has picked them, so can't be bad" and "too big to fail". We as users have no real way to influence the masses and as bad as it makes me feel saying it, we need ... "influencers" for that.
Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022
@tobyx The way to fix this is to build a culture that values de-centralization. The notion of self-hosting and administrating your own instance should be normalized. We should embrace small.
Show threadLeigh GarlandDec 21, 2022
@atomicpoet @tobyx self-hosting is complex and most people do not have the requisite security skills to ensure the safety of themselves or any other users. If we get to the point of every person being represented by their own instance, everyone now has to moderate every instance.
I don't have answers, but I'm not convinced "just host your own" is the solution.
Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022

@toychicken @tobyx Right now, self-hosting has a big barrier to entry. But the future can change, and we should work towards that better future.

Either way, self-hosting should be encouraged. If you have the knowledge and means, do it!

Show threadsplicer
@atomicpoet Not to contradict you but to expand: if you can, host yourself and a few of your friends/family. Even if it were efficient to have all sites be individual hosts (and I don't think it will ever be) there's value to sharing a space, to have both local and global scopes.

It *does* sort of contradict you because it would take longer to get to 1:1 user:host, but I suspect you like the idea of millions of small (even if not individual) hosts. @toychicken @tobyx
Dec 21, 2022 at 7:29pmWeb
Show threadChris TrottierDec 21, 2022
@splicer @tobyx @toychicken Not a contradiction: every iterative step helps.