this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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I would argue that the fediverse belongs to the people and corporations should stay out of it. Including media companies who push click bait garbage that fits corporations' narrative.
And I would argue that it belongs to everyone and everybody can federate, defederate, subscribe, follow, and block as meets their needs. This follows the same line of thinking that allows anyone to publish whatever books, music, or video content they like (within the bounds of law) and we can manage our own exposure without resorting to book burnings, etc.
I was just typing something to that effect and your comment just appeared as I was typing.
So yeah I agree with this.
I think the key is to give the user the ability to switch between servers (I hear this is a feature being worked on). That way when an a-hole decides to screw up a server (similar to what reddit and twitter are doing) users can switch to another server without losing contact with their friends. It would also be nice if the majority of the mods agree, they can move communities to another server in a similar fashion.
Also it would be nice if users had the ability to block entire servers. Though maybe that exists, I'm still new to the Fediverse.
Anyway the key is to give the user the ability to connect with who they want and block the things they don't care to be a part of. Right now the social media companies have too much power over this, put the power in the hands of the users, the people that want crap social media can get crap social media. While those of us who want to have actual conversations can avoid the crap without losing anything of value.
Ok fine, but what happens if hosting your own server becomes inaccessible due to costs and media companies become the only ones being able to do so and ~~trans~~ take control over the fediverse?
The way I see it, if there's money to be made with something, you can bet your butt that corporations are going to take over and ensure they keep control over it. And that's what I'm afraid of.
Right now it's easy enough to switch, but even hosting your own server requires either some old PC in a closet or a little raspberry pi server somewhere with a decent enough internet connection with sufficiently high data usage limits at the very least. Otherwise you have to find a company willing to host your server or in the cloud.
Again, in new to this, so please correct me if this doesn't make sense. I'm willing to learn.
Edit: a word due to autocorrect
"Finding a company willing to host your server or in the cloud" is trivial once you actually get serious about looking. There are entire companies whose only line of business is offering server space. They've been around for decades for decades and some have grown positively huge.
Some names to get you started:
Digital Ocean
Linode (now owned by Akami)
Host Papa (Canadian web hosting service that also offers server space).
There are also turnkey installers for lemmy, some tailored to specific hosting technologies.
The only way for corporations to take over the fediverse is through the inaction of those who prefer otherwise. Keeping in mind, of course, that it might turn out that the majority of people might actually flock to a Facebook-controlled instance. No big deal. Those of us who prefer to just kick around on the open internet will continue to do so.
If a lot of people start using the fediverse the costs could become too much even if media companies aren't involved. The costs aren't dependent on the media companies' involvement it's dependent on the number of users on the service. If too many people start using the fediverse right now it's already the case where it could become unsustainable and servers may shut down and we'd have to go back to reddit or wherever.
Though I think it's doubtful that will happen. Various costs keep decreasing, and if the number of users increase, the amount of ad revenue and/or donation revenue will scale with that. Also the number of people with the knowledge and resources to set up a server to host a portion of users would increase.
Besides having a corporation handling some of the load would in some ways decrease the costs to private individuals and small organizations hosting their sites. Sure there would be more content available to serve to their users but that would be a good thing isn't it? The various user interface interactions from the users of a corporate fediverse site would cost that corporation bandwidth costs.