@FediTips With all due respect...

Your main argument seems to be a fear that if offered a lot of money, that someone running a huge instance like mastodon.social will eagerly sell it if a large enough offer comes up.

My question to you is, what constitutes a "large instance"? Is there an exact number and if so, do you believe that all instances should be capped at that number and no longer allowed to accept new users?

Thanks.

@Mrfunkedude @FediTips

It is a poor experience right now for lots of reasons, not just this hypothetical (although there is no shortage of corporations betraying trust, so not necessarily *that* hypothetical.)

It is hard to get to know your neighbours on a large instance. SOOO many messages. MUCH harder to moderate, which means abusers slip through. Costs more money to run. Waters down core theme (retro, music, academia, etc.) if applicable. Why voluntarily submit to a poorer experience?

@Mrfunkedude @Her_Doing @FediTips Too big is when the problems of scale (other toots in the conversation have specific examples) grow faster than the economies of scale save effort/resources.

I'd guess this occurs somewhere between 64ki users and 16Mi users in most cases, but depends on the exact cost metrics applied.

If you are having to deal with cluster splitting _within_ your instance infrastructure, you should be 2 (or more) federated instances, instead, e.g.