In one of Mike’s recent posts about the radical reshaping of the social media landscape currently underway, he noted that Mastodon/ActivityPub might have a “Gmail moment”, when bi…
What is your opinion on coming corporate entrance to the fedi?
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It’s never a good thing when “Web 3” is spoken anywhere near anything you value.
Some dodgy crypto-coin company buying up a largely defederated and japanese only instance isn’t the “Gmail moment”. It’s not much different from attempts like Gab or Truth Social etc.
But the “Gmail moment” or I would rather call it the Google Talk / XMPP disaster is a real danger to look out for.
Interestingly, we already see that. Mastodon does it. They have their own API for 3rd party apps, they’re looking at their own unique version of quote toots. They refuse to use widely used features across the fedi verse. They get away with is because of their sheer size.
I read your post “The future is disruptive, and I can’t wait!”. And while I share your enthusiasm for the opportunities and potential of the Fediverse - I have been advocating them for years - I do not share the optimism expressed by the people on this thread as to the role of current Fedi culture and Free Software movement, if corporate interest comes. But I fully expected these kinds of answers.
Some time ago I had written notes on the related major fedi challenge of Complacency and intertia. Where the mere fact that we have decentralized technology gives people somehow the idea “We have arrived. We have won”. There’s the enthusiasm of the Early Web on the Fediverse now. The web that nowadays we call the “Corporate Web”. A hyperlinked, decentralized web of information. Thwarted by hypercapitalism. There’s nothing at all that protects fedi from going the same direction. All the years up to now FOSS movement have been in control. But we haven’t managed to organize a strong “technology substrate” that gives much hope of holding our position with corporate interest coming.
Bad.
Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.
In the worst case scenario where discussion is mostly held on a few instances owned by vampires, we’re still better off because federation is a helpful feature.
serious investors
I think that it is irrelevant who creates an instance in a decentralized social network, anyone is free to do so, since it does not affect the other instances, except to give more stability to the federation as a whole.
I have nothing against it, as long as the Fedi remains open source and we can still operate instances that don’t cater to their will.
I think it’s awesome. We get to see them seethe when they get fediblocked into oblivion! :D
Good luck to them…until they can bully the rest of the verse into doing things they don’t want to do they’ll be pretty powerless. Could come with a sudden change if enough money is dumped into the right places.