Sally Ride’s 1977 inquiry letter to NASA easily fits in a single post:

"To whom it may concern,

I am a PhD candidate in astrophysics at Stanford University, and am interested in the space shuttle program. Please send me the forms necessary to apply as a 'mission specialist' candidate.

Thank you,
Sally Ride”

With all that in mind, here's a suggestion:

➡️ *IF* mastodon.social becomes more than 50% of the Fediverse, either by total users or monthly active users, the rest of us should defederate it.

Sticking with mastodon.social because "that's where the people are" is pointless. Centralised growth will simply cause the governance problems we've seen on Twitter and Facebook to be replicated on here.

Growth has to be decentralised in order to protect the independence of all Fedi servers.

(4/4)

The trademark alone gives Mastodon gGmbH huge power, it lets them tell any server using the word "mastodon" in its domain name what software or forks it can use.

And it's getting worse. Mastodon gGmbH is now making official apps which direct people to sign up on mastodon.social instead of a random trusted server or choice of trusted servers.

The more people sign up on mastodon.social, the more tempting Mastodon gGmbH becomes as a takeover target.

(3/4)

Here's what Eugen Rochko's Mastodon gGmbH organisation now controls:

-The Mastodon server software & API (though the current version is FOSS)
-The mastodon.social server, which has 1 in 7 of all Fediverse users
-The official Mastodon apps, now telling people to just sign up on mastodon.social
-The official website at joinmastodon.org
-The trademark for the word "mastodon", which lets them dictate terms to any server which uses it

This is a tempting package for any potential buyers.

(2/4)