Like it or not, it should no longer be assumed that "volunteers" are running your instances.

The Mask Group, which now runs three large instances "has raised over US$50 million from private and institutional backers"—their words not mine.

There's going to be a massive land grab of all these big instances. There will be lots of merging and acquiring too.

My advice is that you all become *very* aware of who owns your instance and why.

Get to know your admins—make sure their values align with your own.

If you don't want to put your social media life in the hands of strangers, then self-host your own instance.

To everyone using mastodon.cloud and mstdn.jp: remember, you're not locked into those instances.

If you want, you can migrate elsewhere.

This is not Twitter—you have a choice regarding where your home will be on the Fediverse.

@atomicpoet I think I reported or at least complained about mastodon.cloud months before.

The admin, Suji Yan, Sujitech LLC, a chinese who resides in Japan, is a staunch crypto bro (https://sujitech.com)

mastodon.cloud has been unmoderated for a long time, because the admin was too busy with crypto stuff. And other users have complained about it.