Ignoring the specific example used to make my point, my point was how do you avoid the problem? If PopularInstanceA decides to cut off PopularInstanceB for "reasons" you have fragmented a community with users on both instances going to be unhappy... yes they could all move and suddenly MarginalnstanceC becomes PopularInstanceC as it federates both A and B but users will get lost along the way, most will only tolerate this kind of instance changing crap once and even then how do you stop A cutting off C because they are federating B?
Yes I agree it's all just hypothetical but we're relying on the goodwill of probably unpaid enthusiast server owners to keep the Fediverse stable and that feels like a house of cards to me
This is the most bewildering part of every conversation I've had so far about the fediverse, and it always comes down to this idea that because it is difficult, because it is not the easy and well-funded way that has a buyout or a powertrip at the end of it, that it's somehow bound to fail where, well, so far the platforms claim to be succeeding but let's see how they do with the interest rates as they are for another few years.
Which part of Reddit - leave out Twitter, leave out Facebook, leave out Google, leave out everything else because they only make my question harder to answer; Reddit is currently the great white hope of the Platforms. The one that everyone desperately points to as a platform done right, because the alternative - a world without big corporate daddies seeing to our needs and keeping us safe at night because Alexa is listening to us breathe, a world without the possibility of chatting up a VC capitalist doing a startup and cashing out a billionaire in a couple years - is too horrible to contemplate.
So exactly which part of Reddit, with its legions of unpaid labourers and current shenanigans, is not very obviously a house of cards that is just about to collapse right before their IPO coup-de-grace?
Reddit is "relying on the goodwill of [definitely] unpaid enthusiasts," except their goal is not to foster community and offer an alternative to the platforms, their goal is to do their IPO, collect their golden parachutes, and let the whole thing fester like the untreated infection that it is.
I will place my bet on the enthusiast server owners and the willingness of their communities to take collective responsibility to make sure that we do have an actual alternative to this bullshit before I'll ever trust another platform.
And you know, we ought to know better than to question the ability of communities of enthusiasts and weirdoes to actually make something happen without a fucking VC involved. Look at GNU(/Linux), on which the entire world runs. We got this baby, and we won't need YC to make it work. I'm sure there are folks in this forum that won't like that either - if you can't monetize it, it's worthless to them, and that's why our communities keep going up in Private Equity smoke, just like Sears.
Ignoring the specific example used to make my point, my point was how do you avoid the problem? If PopularInstanceA decides to cut off PopularInstanceB for "reasons" you have fragmented a community with users on both instances going to be unhappy... yes they could all move and suddenly MarginalnstanceC becomes PopularInstanceC as it federates both A and B but users will get lost along the way, most will only tolerate this kind of instance changing crap once and even then how do you stop A cutting off C because they are federating B?
Yes I agree it's all just hypothetical but we're relying on the goodwill of probably unpaid enthusiast server owners to keep the Fediverse stable and that feels like a house of cards to me