I talk to lots of devs, server admins, and users—and the trend has been that Mastodon’s BDFL approach is actively harming the rest of the Fediverse.

Community safety features haven’t been implemented in years.

Aspects of ActivityPub aren’t utilized or they’re kneecapped even though they’ve been present since the very beginning.

Things that are possible elsewhere on the Fediverse aren’t possible on Mastodon.

Here’s what especially bothers me.

Nomadic identity already exists on the Fediverse. @evan, who co-authored ActivityPub, has said it is possible.

@mike has made a protocol that does nomadic identity, and he’s building a Fediverse Identity Manager too.

#Calckey allows you to not just migrate but import your posts.

I wouldn’t mind mastodon.social being the default server if Mastodon has nomadic identity.

But it doesn’t.

On this point, even #Bluesky has an advantage here.

I’ve said for awhile that, when it comes to the Fediverse, people have myopia regarding the possibilities of ActivityPub and are focusing too much on Mastodon.

Partly, that’s because once you’re in Mastodon, it’s very hard to know about the Fediverse outside of it.

As a result, people who use Mastodon think the Fediverse is Mastodon.

We’re at the point where Mastodon clients are actively hostile about server apps that aren’t Mastodon—despite using Mastodon’s API.

And it’s questionable to me whether or not Mastodon’s API should be the “standard”.

The Fediverse shouldn’t be a competition. Yet, I feel the Fediverse is becoming more hostile to people who don’t use Mastodon.

One thing that gets me is all the folks who say, “We need to spread Mastodon—and then after they join Mastodon, they’ll be sold on the Fediverse.”

Frankly, I’m skeptical about that approach.

I’ve looked through the stats. Few people migrate to other parts of the Fediverse after joining Mastodon.

Mastodon is 80% of the Fediverse.

It’s closest competitor is Misskey—and Misskey is 3% of the Fediverse.

This despite that Misskey is in many ways superior to Mastodon in terms of usability.

For awhile, I was okay with Mastodon being 80% of the Fediverse.

I was also okay with a campaign like @spreadmastodon.

But now I’m wondering: will servers that *aren’t* mastodon.social benefit from this campaign?

Have we gone from Mastodon dominating the Fediverse to now mastodon.social dominating it too?

This is not an irrational fear.

Despite my worries, I have some hope about the current state of the Fediverse.

1. @mammoth was right to default to its own app-specific server—I was wrong. Other app developers should follow suit

2. The *key apps are growing very fast, especially in Japan—but also in the West too

3. There’s Bluesky—so if ActivityPub fails to decentralize, AT protocol is an option

Mastodon is not *yet* the only option.