They’ll make non corporate instances illegal, or make software standards that indie instances can’t comply with, or just blast enough propaganda that people will think indie instances are “untrustworthy” or something.
Eventually it will be like YouTube now. Who’s going to try to create a new YouTube, when they have to compete with the popularity of YouTube? It’s all centralized. Eventually the fediverse will coalesce around a few corporate owned instances, who will be defederated from any and all indie instances.
The structure of the fediverse buys us time, not immunity.
Corporations have as much power to fuck up the Fediverse as Microsoft has to prevent Linux from being a thing. They can try (and most definitely will), but ultimately will not be able to stop the FOSS community from taking things where we want to go. Propaganda about “safety” is definitely on the cards, but things like making community-run instance illegal are far fetched (in the US at least, because that would seem to be pretty clearly unconstitutional wrt the 1st amendment.).
So, I’m not necessary disagreeing with you, but I think the fediverse might be our last and only chance to pull the internet back into the hands of the people, at least somewhat. If the Fediverse reaches a critical mass of users to the point where it has become a big business on its own merits I think we can expect a lot more corporate interests from seeping in, but just like Linux that doesn’t necessarily stop the community side of things from existing.
What usually happens is that companies will come in and try to do value add. Look at mastodon, you got Facebook/Meta and other companies trying to come in and join the fediverse. They’ll bring the numbers and their value add - that’s where the extension will come in. You will need people you can trust to in activitypub circles who can make sure that they are only focused on managing the standard without a ton of politics - but once Big Money comes in - a slow degradation begins.
3% of desktop PCs and a much larger percent of servers run Linux. That’s a fairly significant fraction of the market. I wouldn’t really say Linux isn’t a thing.
Realistically, the easiest solution is not to do anything shady, but just to throw money at the corporate instances until they’re a better experience than the non-corporate ones. People will flock to the ones that are faster, have more features, or cool extras and abandon the independent instances.
From there, they probably will eventually do a variation of your idea though, I doubt they’ll try to make them illegal, likely just defederate based on them slowing down the network, harboring spammers, or find one small group on them doing something unsavory and then start the propaganda machine you mentioned trying to brand all the users on non corporate instances as supporting whatever that group was doing. Even easier would be taking over the development cycle and just implement breaking changes that require items that independent instances just can’t keep up with.
It is too late when they “try” because by that time all your friends will be using GoogleTalk because it was shiny and easy to use. And then you had to add your GoogleTalk account to your own jabber client because for some reason you could never really talk to people on their google talk accounts from your jabber.org account. And then google added some weird stuff to the protocol and you couldn’t connect to your talk account from your jabber client anymore. So you began using the Google Talk web client and told your remaining friends on jabber.org that they too should come use GoogleTalk because … and then Google officially defederates and those few people left talking to each other on jabber are finally alone. And then a few years later google announces it shuts down googletalk because they can. And xmpp is so dead that the fediverse invented a new chat called Matrix because jabber is burned beyond recognition.
We can always defederate corporate-owned instances if they try.
They’ll make non corporate instances illegal, or make software standards that indie instances can’t comply with, or just blast enough propaganda that people will think indie instances are “untrustworthy” or something.
Eventually it will be like YouTube now. Who’s going to try to create a new YouTube, when they have to compete with the popularity of YouTube? It’s all centralized. Eventually the fediverse will coalesce around a few corporate owned instances, who will be defederated from any and all indie instances.
The structure of the fediverse buys us time, not immunity.
Corporations have as much power to fuck up the Fediverse as Microsoft has to prevent Linux from being a thing. They can try (and most definitely will), but ultimately will not be able to stop the FOSS community from taking things where we want to go. Propaganda about “safety” is definitely on the cards, but things like making community-run instance illegal are far fetched (in the US at least, because that would seem to be pretty clearly unconstitutional wrt the 1st amendment.).
So, I’m not necessary disagreeing with you, but I think the fediverse might be our last and only chance to pull the internet back into the hands of the people, at least somewhat. If the Fediverse reaches a critical mass of users to the point where it has become a big business on its own merits I think we can expect a lot more corporate interests from seeping in, but just like Linux that doesn’t necessarily stop the community side of things from existing.
What usually happens is that companies will come in and try to do value add. Look at mastodon, you got Facebook/Meta and other companies trying to come in and join the fediverse. They’ll bring the numbers and their value add - that’s where the extension will come in. You will need people you can trust to in activitypub circles who can make sure that they are only focused on managing the standard without a ton of politics - but once Big Money comes in - a slow degradation begins.
Which is hilarious because Linux isn’t really a thing. It’s got a tiny fraction of the market. Microsoft and Apple absolutely dominate the OS market.
3% of desktop PCs and a much larger percent of servers run Linux. That’s a fairly significant fraction of the market. I wouldn’t really say Linux isn’t a thing.
3% is statistical noise lol
You reminded me about a Ted talk on fixing the internet….
Here it is
Jaron Lanier: How we need to remake the internet
Realistically, the easiest solution is not to do anything shady, but just to throw money at the corporate instances until they’re a better experience than the non-corporate ones. People will flock to the ones that are faster, have more features, or cool extras and abandon the independent instances.
From there, they probably will eventually do a variation of your idea though, I doubt they’ll try to make them illegal, likely just defederate based on them slowing down the network, harboring spammers, or find one small group on them doing something unsavory and then start the propaganda machine you mentioned trying to brand all the users on non corporate instances as supporting whatever that group was doing. Even easier would be taking over the development cycle and just implement breaking changes that require items that independent instances just can’t keep up with.
It is too late when they “try” because by that time all your friends will be using GoogleTalk because it was shiny and easy to use. And then you had to add your GoogleTalk account to your own jabber client because for some reason you could never really talk to people on their google talk accounts from your jabber.org account. And then google added some weird stuff to the protocol and you couldn’t connect to your talk account from your jabber client anymore. So you began using the Google Talk web client and told your remaining friends on jabber.org that they too should come use GoogleTalk because … and then Google officially defederates and those few people left talking to each other on jabber are finally alone. And then a few years later google announces it shuts down googletalk because they can. And xmpp is so dead that the fediverse invented a new chat called Matrix because jabber is burned beyond recognition.