Post AR6F3meFrZhkSTn9P6 by gmcgath@liberdon.com
(DIR) More posts by gmcgath@liberdon.com
(DIR) Post #AR6Bnt6RnUHNyuhuPg by gmcgath@liberdon.com
2022-12-29T12:30:00Z
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1/3 What will happen to Mastodon after the present run of enthusiasm winds down? People will realize it's only as reliable as the instance they use. Many people who follow the socialist ideal of "I should get stuff for free" are attracted to Mastodon and won't contribute money to their instance. Managers will get tired of working for free and neglect their instances or shut them down.
(DIR) Post #AR6Bqr3HsZ56UOdz28 by gmcgath@liberdon.com
2022-12-29T12:30:33Z
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2/3 There will be a period of consolidation. The history of email gives some clues. Anyone can start an SMTP server, but the big ones have perceived advantages in convenience. Some volunteer-run instances will thrive; others will survive on the edges; many will go away.
(DIR) Post #AR6BsodznpLBbHkVY8 by gmcgath@liberdon.com
2022-12-29T12:30:55Z
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3/3 For-profit businesses will get into the act. If Mastodon is successful enough, there will be a Google Mastodon. Commercial instances have ads or charge for premium usage. The fans of non-commercial Mastodon will scream, but business is what will establish the network as mainstream.It won't be today's world. A lot of people won't like it. But it will give users what they want, even if it's not what you think they should want.
(DIR) Post #AR6E8IcEqoQQo9RDSC by BigEarl@mindly.social
2022-12-29T12:56:06Z
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@gmcgath That is a very pessimistic outlook. I support my instance, but its not all about the money, its about the independence and overall democracy of the platform. People who donate their time to, say, food pantries are not in it for the money but for the common good. If I was an instance admin I would be militant that the fat cat "masters of the universe" would NEVER own my server! And if they bought the base software and made it proprietary, I would leave Social Media as a failed estate.
(DIR) Post #AR6F3meFrZhkSTn9P6 by gmcgath@liberdon.com
2022-12-29T13:06:31Z
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@BigEarl I don't see what I posted as pessimistic. I think Mastodon, or similar federated services, will thrive and become mainstream.As long as you live in a mostly free society, there's no reason to give up ownership of your server. If someone buys the Mastodon software and does bad things with it, anyone else can fork it and keep it going as open source. That happened, for example, with OpenOffice, which has been supplanted by the LibreOffice fork.
(DIR) Post #AR6FjFY7JZRDxxh3HU by BigEarl@mindly.social
2022-12-29T13:13:59Z
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@gmcgath I agree, but allow me to be pessimistic for a moment. Ownership of anything is based on the inherent freedom given to us by the Constitution. We have a party in this country who would be happy to rewrite that constitution. We have already begun to see rights being stripped from the citizenry in a slow march to those ends.Ownership of information (platforms, servers, software) can be taken at any time. More power to the admins who work to basically keep all our freedom for information
(DIR) Post #AR6Fn1mOS5teQ0Al1M by TerryBernstein@ohai.social
2022-12-29T13:14:39Z
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@gmcgath There's an irony. FOSS and related proponents want their stuff to be mainstream. But hate it when it becomes the mainstream. This is not "socialist". That's nonsense. It is, however often individualist.
(DIR) Post #AR6Ks7nG1GXMHypIe0 by h4890@liberdon.com
2022-12-29T14:11:38Z
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@gmcgath Why would they scream? If google starts a mastodon, that won't matter for liberdon. It will just be parallel worlds with a minimum of interaction between them. What I would be interested in, is if this google of mastodon would just end up being another twitter after a year or two.