I don't think people are realising the danger the Fediverse is in.
The only thing stopping corporations and VCs taking over this place is that the Fediverse is spread out on many different servers, which makes it very difficult to purchase.
If most of the Fediverse ends up on mastodon.social, which is now a strong possibility, there will be nothing to stop most of it being sold to Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever.
The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more likely a buyout is to happen.
(1/4)
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)
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)
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)
@feditips Defederating a server just because it's popular is saying "I don't want to receive emails from Google or Microsoft", which is just crazy sounding.
For providing tips on how to use Mastodon and the Fediverse, you're actively leveraging your platform to spread opinions and propaganda, removing your status of being purely an informational service to the community.
Although it is extreme to suggest to block mastodon.social... But I mean, find a different server
@mrhamel @feditips@mstdn.social Ironically this is a pretty good example of why such a measure is necessary. You wouldn't say this if you self-hosted email, try it sometime. You can follow every best practice and your emails will still be thrown into the trash, because those services and servers are popular and they have zero reason (and in fact a significant financial disincentive) to address this
@mrhamel If it's possible at all to prevent what happened to email happening too to the fediverse, this is a worthwhile thing to do.
see for example here (in German) from @kuketzblog : www.kuketz-blog.de/gmail-googl…
"Gmail: Google reads your emails (...) A Gmail user may have agreed to the analysis of his email content. But for someone who does not have a Gmail account, this agreement does not apply - and yet when sent to Gmail accounts, "foreign" content is also scanned and evaluated. For precisely this reason, by the way, I use a Gmail auto-responder that sends Gmail users a notice. Anyone who doesn't use Gmail should be critical of their communications with Gmail contacts."
@feditips
@mrhamel The concern isn't really "just because it's popular" but if you'd like to stick with the email server metaphor, suppose there's a domain that constantly sends spam and phishing attempts to your email service, to the point where the risk to the users in your domain is large enough to override accepting emails from it.
The analogy isn't perfect because we don't expect email providers to police attacks from their users, but that IS what has already happened on mastodon.social.
@mrhamel I've only been here a few months and have already seen multiple examples of smaller instances defederating from M.S because their users were harassed and M.S didn't take the moderating actions necessary to protect their users from abuse. This is not a hypothetical, this is going on now, and as Mastodon is funneling new signups from its app to grow M.S even further, it will be even harder to moderate effectively than it is currently.
@ceremus That comes with the popularity of any social media instance. If it grows so big (regardless of how), the amount of upkeep grows with it. Not responding to abuse complaints is very different from not responding adequately.
Let me ask you this, if you get spam from hundreds of Gmail addresses, are you going to filter out Google as a whole? Very highly unlikely. I'd rather Mastodon and/or ActivityPub get much finer spam controls added.
@mrhamel Again, there is no point in asking the hypothetical "but would you REALLY block gmail/microsoft/mastodon.social?" Instances have already been doing this. The abuse coming from users on that server and the lack of moderation on M.S's behalf was bad enough for them to take the nuclear option.
@ceremus Then I guess I'm fortunate enough to not have it affect me in the slightest.
@ceremus Antispam daemons would automatically filter each email as necessary based on words, heuristics, domain, whole From address, etc. Some are dropped, some go to a spam folder, all depends on how bad it really is. Mastodon does not have the same fine grain controls as email.
@mrhamel As said, the metaphor is not perfect, nor is it the point. The mechanisms to protect users from abuse on SM platforms are as different from email as they are complex, and effective moderation is a central pillar of it.
M.S's moderation has shown to be lacking (I've even seen users in this thread attesting to that), and auto-directing new signups to make it larger will inevitably worsen that problem.