The federation/migration problem in mastodon seems very important. My broader thought: SMTP/NNTP/etc. thrived because of a set of trusted entities (govt/uni) that could reliably run federated servers. My choice of server is going to be based on which one is most likely to be up and running years in the future.
Who should those entities be today?
I worked on instant messaging federation for a time back in the day. Check out the history of xmpp (and Google/Pidgin) if you want to see things NOT working out for attempted federation.
Unfortunately, all the easy solutions I can think of begin, "Assuming the triumph of global anarcho-syndicalism..."
The blithe "Pick a server that you trust" on the mastodon sign-up page sums it up. I'd feel foolish saying that I trust any server right now, and I don't even know what criteria to assess servers by.
The most obvious criterion is number of users, which will dissuade federation, as @bcrypt points out.
The second most obvious criterion is, I guess, "Run by some big/huge entity likely to stick around for a while," which has its own problems too.
I guess closing mastodon.social registrations has made this problem a lot more urgent, for better or for worse.
Maybe round-robining signups among a handful of large servers (by cycling registration closures) is a short-term kludge until the ecosystem settles down a bit more.
auerbach
Tristanâś…
Way