An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
This is also a major concern of mine. We ideally don’t want any single instance to become dominant enough that they can afford to de-federate without much repercussion. Excessive consolidation also leads to higher cost pressures, which in turn incentivize revenue generation to fund the operations and potentially compensation for effort. Keeping everything distributed would help avoid many pitfalls.
That’s why each instance should be donation funded