@ottocrat as I am shortly going to have to migrate my Mastodon account to a different server because my current host doesn't find it economic to continue paying the hosting costs, I am less than enthusiastic about Mastodon's business model.

@Frances_Coppola Well that’s definitely the downside. I hear you.

@ottocrat @Frances_Coppola - That's "econtwitter" not wanting to pay Mastodon a fee, or have I misunderstood? Mastodon seems confusingly decentralised in its mammoth family tree, I just took the most obvious branch: for interpersonal/public social media use. But I suppose if you are looking for a professionally specific definition of Mast (is "econtwitter" that?), it may be someone asks someone else tfor a fee, tho for what special(ist) services I don't know. Does e.g. BSky help in that regard?

@pcsoblahdeehell @Frances_Coppola Hosting costs are about renting server space - Mastodon don’t charge for using their client

@pcsoblahdeehell @Frances_Coppola Bluesky meanwhile host the content themselves and are paying for the server space. So currently they’re burning through VC investor money.

@pcsoblahdeehell @Frances_Coppola The weakness but also the strength of Mastodon is that it is federated - Mastodon provide the client software but anyone can host it on their own servers. That means servers can go down whenever a server host can’t afford it or be bothered any more, but otoh you can easily migrate to another server, or host your own.