You realize the second part would also happen if the Fediverse "takes off", yes? Then naturally companies would come in and trivially take things over as there's money to be made.

It's a natural end state until governments can be made to curb corporate freedom.

[–] gedaliyah 2 points 2 months ago

Before billion dollar companies move in, we need to see governments, universities, and journalists on the platform.

[–] blue_berry 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think thats unlikely. If the fediverse wants it or not, its growth is now heavily dependent on Meta

[–] Carighan 3 points 2 months ago

Ah yes of course. Both Meta and Bluesky have far outrun any federated-short-blogging effort of the Fediverse, and as a result companies will rather want to monetize those. But this is also the paradoxical situation of people in here who both want "the Fediverse to succeed" and "keep corporate interests out of the Fediverse": Either won't happen.

Right now it looks more like this'll remain a hyper-specialized place for specific discussions, Mastodon more so. You can go there for false dichotomies in regards to browser development feedback for example, or for dejected Youtube actual-content-creators getting yelled at for engaging with their community.

But it seems it'll stay at that. However, this also keeps any monetary interest away from it, so that's good. Of course, should this ever change and the Fediverse grows more welcoming and that works and it grows bigger, of course the moment users move in (in numbers), advertisers, astroturfers and all will move in with them. That's just a given.

And partially why I hate this "Just block'em!"-approach to Threads: It assumes the stick-your-fingers-into-your-ears-and-ignore-the-issue approach would ever be an actual solution to any problem. And then when you run into an issue you cannot avoid that way, you have fuck all experience doing something actionable about it, as you've never tried before.