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.
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@feditips Good heavens — how did mastodon.social suddenly become an evil menace, and Eugen some kind of villain? It seems to me you’ve spun out a dystopian fantasy of how things *might* go bad, and now you’re whipping up public alarm over that fantasy, *as though it were really happening*. But it’s not! The fediverse is growing and thriving. New communities are being spawned and existing ones are growing in reach and vitality. We can thank, among others, @Gargron for a lot of that.
Pre-emptive caution is reasonable.
Multi-billion dollar operators can very easily write some big cheques to a handful of dominant operators in the fediverse and thereby gain control of the network if the fediverse is not careful.
Facebook and Twitter have vast revenue streams to protect as do others.
