The Fediverse as it stands now is super ambitious, prospering, and honestly really exciting to see and be a part of.

I worry about the sustainability, though. The current model of donations, volunteer mods, and so on is working as intended, and the experience is flourishing. I see this model standing up for at least a couple of years as-is, barring any major changes of any kind.

My question becomes: How do we plan for the future entry of corporate influence into all of this? Because it will happen. I’ve watched most social media platforms and systems come into being in my lifetime, and also watched most of their demises. Money, marketing, and ads always come for them in some form.

What’s being done now to help prevent toxic corporate influence in the future? Can anything be done? The best part about defederated instances is a corporate influence could get ahold of one instance, but not all of them. Great in concept, but how do we plan for a future when corporate interest reaches these platforms and they throw enough money around to shake things up for the worse, as it always seems to?

  • @what_is_a_nameEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Honestly.

    1. I will pay a monthly fee for my share of the server costs / human costs
    2. with that I will insist my instance admins guard against attacks. - defederate bad actors like Meta and bot farms, join assertive instance pacts to protect at least our kernel of the fediverse

    And in the end that is it - we will never save and protect and preserve the whole of fediverse. Some admins will be bought. Some will be compromised.

    But we can protect a “citadel” of key value. And I am happy to financially support that.

    The sorry thing is - I am terrible with donations (something something something - “everyone. Should pay if I pay” is the gist of my boneheaded reasoning). But I’ll happily pay a fee to sustain my instance.