Mastodawn

Kari Smolander Jan 14, 2025

This is a monumental day for the future of the social web, though it might not be obvious for a while. Mastodon matures its governance model with a great, solid non-profit https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/ and a coalition of independents push to open up Bluesky's AT Protocol: https://freeourfeeds.com/ These two moves together put the most credible players on solid ground for years to come — and set up the open platforms to enable lots of innovation just when it's needed most.

The people should own the town square

It is more important than ever that the social web is not controlled by corporations. Today, Mastodon is taking another step towards its founding ideals: independence and non-profit ownership. We're transferring ownership of key assets to a new European not-for-profit entity, ensuring our mission remains true to a decentralised social web, not corporate control.

Mastodon Blog

william.maggos Jan 13, 2025

$30m could do a lot more good growing and improving the fedi. fixing any problems that people have with it so far. ugh.

2xfo Jan 13, 2025

@anildash
Why should we care about bluesky? I came here to get away from billionaires.

Anil Dash Jan 13, 2025

@RnDanger Because it's an open, interoperable platform with millions of users and interesting apps being built on top of it

2xfo Jan 13, 2025

@anildash
Sure, but it's a business ran by billionaires looking to make a profit. Why is a nonprofit concerned with them? What do they want there? I don't think fedi should be chasing billionaires to get their buy in because they will change the system to extract profit from the users.

And, I'm sorry, it doesn't help that I'm really suspicious of the nonprofit "social armor" effect after seeing ChatGPT and WordPress recently. It's hard not to assume individual profit and power motives are at play here more than anything else when billionaires are held up as valid actors in an independent space.

DoNotPunchDown Jan 13, 2025

@RnDanger @anildash

I completely agree. I wondered how this place ran without ads. As soon as I registered, on an email I had no spam on, I have been suddenly receiving 10 or more spam emails a day.

I have gone without social media before. Not a problem to do it again. I came back from another server and I regret my new choices. This new blue sky thing, it's the antithesis to what the fediverse is supposed to be

2xfo Jan 13, 2025

@DoNotPunchDown @anildash
I pay a small amount to support my instance and I've never seen spam from this place. (Edit: these facts are in no way related.)

Honestly, the more i learn about Mastodon.Social the more i want to defederate from it. I often wonder what the leaders there think Mastodon is for.

DoNotPunchDown Jan 14, 2025

@RnDanger @anildash

I used to give monthly to the server I had before. I should have gone back to that.

Same. I didn't realize how different each instance can be. Definitely learning a lot

Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋Jan 20, 2025

@RnDanger @anildash who from the team is a billionaire?

spinbackwards Jan 13, 2025

@anildash @RnDanger Does AT support ActivityPub?

Magnus Ahltorp Jan 13, 2025

@spinbackwards @anildash @RnDanger No. It has to be bridged.

Evan Prodromou Jan 13, 2025

@ahltorp @spinbackwards @anildash @RnDanger We have a great bridge, though!

https://fed.brid.gy/

It's run by A New Social https://anew.social/

Bridgy Fed

Bridgy Fed is a bridge between decentralized social networks like the fediverse, Bluesky, and web sites and blogs.

Magnus Ahltorp Jan 13, 2025

@evan @spinbackwards @anildash @RnDanger Bridges are good when you can’t solve it any other way, but a bridge is like trying to look out the window, and instead of seeing the full 3D landscape, you see all the objects like they’re decals on the window.

If you go to the next window, there is another set of decals there. The tree-shaped decal on both windows represent the same tree in the outside world, but to you they look like two distinct objects. Because you can’t see out the window.

Magnus Ahltorp Jan 13, 2025

@evan This is not a reason to not have bridges. They try to solve the problem as best they can, and I’m thankful that people do that, but it would be better if they weren’t needed. There’s always a loss of fidelity, and the bridge becomes a single point of failure between the systems.

2xfo Jan 13, 2025

@ahltorp @evan
I hate bridges. They don't work naturally and i have no interest in seeing them as posts here if they're not posted here.
Just give me a link that works.

naught101 Jan 13, 2025

@anildash @RnDanger

It's not open and interoperable YET, right? And it's still owned by corporates, so there's a reasonable chance they will never come good on their promises..

Stuart (moved)Jan 13, 2025

@RnDanger @anildash

I came here to escape algorithms, ads and Elon. Some early Twitter escapees, notably the Guardian's Zoe Williams, found that here was boring and having to search for stuff rather than the platform deciding what you wanted was too hard. Hence they flew back and are probably now on BlueSky. I don't know because apart from the sketchy bridge thingy I can't see it unless I sign up there.

Extending ActivityHub & AT to interoperate gives us fhe best of worlds a choice of platform that best satisfies one's curated or non-curated needs but not at the expense of choosing the group of people you can interact with.

That's the what Fediverse was built for. At the instance or individual level to see all or just yourself.

Tim Bray Jan 13, 2025

@anildash I'm a little cynical about announcements of fundraising *targets* but still, the important take-away is that a lot of people have noticed that social networking as a commercial product really doesn’t have an interesting future, it’s time to build out alternatives.

Anil Dash Jan 14, 2025

@timbray yeah, I’m skeptical of that too. But I think planting a flag in the ground on the larger goals is interesting and useful, and the larger sense of there being many projects pushing these parallel goals forward is great.

Luis Villa Jan 14, 2025

@anildash @timbray I guess this means I need to finish writing my blog post on this.

The number seems good to me. This is a big problem; we should stop pretending we can make a meaningful dent in it on a literal shoestring.

Gaëtan Perrault Jan 14, 2025

@luis_in_brief @anildash @timbray I like that there is a number, €5 million, because this lack of scope is a constant challenge when discussing the fediverse.

I think it's also starting to put down what those of us on this thread understand about this model. Making this part of the commons only works if we have funding and governance contributions.

If Mastodon can't get that funding level, it won't be able to support a "commons". Getting people to understand that funding is still a fight.

CartyBoston Jan 13, 2025

@anildash I'd have liked them to wait to name the principals in the new org. "It's a nonprofit!" does not tell us very much yet.

Don Cruse Jan 13, 2025

@anildash I’m glad someone is taking steps to build a second infrastructure (or at least relay) for Bluesky. It seems like a heavy lift. It’s striking that this group’s fundraising goal ($30mm) is about as much as Bluesky has raised itself.

Andrés Hirunatan 🐌Jan 13, 2025

@anildash those are enormously great news! Thanks for sharing.

Ted Curran M. Ed.Jan 13, 2025

@anildash
That's wonderful news! Now if we can only attract more high profile accounts to the #fediverse like #news, #influencers, #brands, #tech, and #ngos to give readers more to find here!
@glitchdotcom

Toni Lawrence Jan 14, 2025

@anildash Without independent writers who are not afraid to dig for the truth we as a society will not survive.