I don't think people are realising the danger the Fediverse is in.
The only thing stopping corporations and VCs taking over this place is that the Fediverse is spread out on many different servers, which makes it very difficult to purchase.
If most of the Fediverse ends up on mastodon.social, which is now a strong possibility, there will be nothing to stop most of it being sold to Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever.
The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more likely a buyout is to happen.
(1/4)
Here's what Eugen Rochko's Mastodon gGmbH organisation now controls:
-The Mastodon server software & API (though the current version is FOSS)
-The mastodon.social server, which has 1 in 7 of all Fediverse users
-The official Mastodon apps, now telling people to just sign up on mastodon.social
-The official website at joinmastodon.org
-The trademark for the word "mastodon", which lets them dictate terms to any server which uses it
This is a tempting package for any potential buyers.
(2/4)
The trademark alone gives Mastodon gGmbH huge power, it lets them tell any server using the word "mastodon" in its domain name what software or forks it can use.
And it's getting worse. Mastodon gGmbH is now making official apps which direct people to sign up on mastodon.social instead of a random trusted server or choice of trusted servers.
The more people sign up on mastodon.social, the more tempting Mastodon gGmbH becomes as a takeover target.
(3/4)
With all that in mind, here's a suggestion:
➡️ *IF* mastodon.social becomes more than 50% of the Fediverse, either by total users or monthly active users, the rest of us should defederate it.
Sticking with mastodon.social because "that's where the people are" is pointless. Centralised growth will simply cause the governance problems we've seen on Twitter and Facebook to be replicated on here.
Growth has to be decentralised in order to protect the independence of all Fedi servers.
(4/4)
Did you expend the same amount of effort on choosing an email provider?
It's the same. Just pick one that seems neat and not evil. It doesn't matter all that much, they interoperate with each other.
Which is why migrating instances is much easier on Mastodon. To prevent being locked in.
User concentration on mastodon.social does feel like a problem, maybe a time bomb -- although it is registered as a gGmbH (non-profit/charitable LLC), so should be immune to a hostile takeover.
I haven't yet read about any solutions to offset this general problem -- like a nonprofit "Fediverse Foundation" that accepts donations to seed and guides new community and municipal instances.
When I opted to join Mastodon last month, I first reached out to a friend who runs a home instance, but they were wary of adding any accounts. I then reached out to the admin of a local server in my city, with several users I know, which had paused adding new accounts, but didn't hear back. I ultimately signed up on this instance because I have a network security background (and ongoing interest, although it's no longer my career). If I lose my footing here, I could host my own fediverse instance, although at this point in my life, it would not be worth the stress, storage space, or bandwidth.
(Several years ago, I had an account on a Friendica server, which ultimately shut down, but I had already lost interested in it, because no one I personally knew was on the Fediverse; the landscape is very different now.)
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