They say that corporations don't want to sign up on Mastodon because they are afraid of being supplanted on other instances... I don't quite understand that... They should be deploying right away an official .com instance where themselves check the authenticity of every account...
@noelle you're partially right, but I don't fully agree. It'd be technological culture to learn that, if they want to contact the official account of a company, they should go to the .com instance... I don't find it so difficult... In fact, everybody learnt to go to Google to perform a search...
@DerBlaueMond In this case you may be right; someone technically-savvy enough to know about Mastodon is probably able to understand the concept of instances and brand inconsistency. But corporations are thinking about the future, where Mastodon is as big as Twitter, and they want to be able to control their brand over ALL instances so the future less-savvy users aren't confused.
@DerBlaueMond company move slowly especially when it's about rolling out new product.
But clearly they should create their own private instance with only people of the company and use it as an official way to interact with the users.
Maybe it's a difficult concept to grasp for the lambda user.
@Balor you're right, but these troubles are nothing that a good technological culture taught at school can't solve...
@DerBlaueMond you're going into the chicken π and egg π³ paradox.
To teach in school you need knowledgeable people. To have knowledgeable people you need people to teach them first.
In this case it's more about company culture and their interests in technology.
@Balor Yes, I'm aware that, in practice, that's the ecuatoon that leads them: a balance between risk and interest...
@DerBlaueMond Companies are always careful. If this keeps growing at the pace that it is then they will join. Even if it's just an RSS bot.
@arthursucks you're very right... For them, adoption is a balance between risk and interest...
@arthursucks @DerBlaueMond i run a bot that just posts top HN stories, but what I read today that companies might want to do is simply register their own official mastodon.bigcorporation.com and federate it. I hadn't thought of them doing that myself.
@DerBlaueMond I suppose that's part of why there's not a hurry, tho. They can always be the sole officiators of their own .com instances, so they don't have to try to grab usernames. They can wait and see what Mastodon becomes.
I think many brands (rightly) fear animosity here, so it's not a big rush to be first.
@b_cavello you're very right. Adoption by companies depends on a balance between risk and interest...
@DerBlaueMond I'm not sure I miss the corporations anyway
@jimfenton a very good point... π
@DerBlaueMond I think they fear, rightly, from a strict business perspective, the possibility for harm to the brand. Like, I don't see an upside to Mastodon.coke.com, for example. Maybe Wendy's? They're def winning on Twitter.
@DerBlaueMond Wait until they find out I can make "their-company@my-email-server" any time I want to.
@tek very good comparison, mastodo-mate π
@DerBlaueMond In an ideal world that would work, but honestly, people don't actually check the authenticity of an account that LOOKS real, especially since it's trivial to add a check-mark to your display name here. (I'm thinking of all the fake "Customer Service" accounts on Facebook, for example.)