[ojr]

decentralized social networks won't work because in order to keep a business running you need profits or the expectation of profits to acquire the talent needed to provide a nice user experience. Solutions motivated by capitalism will not disappear anytime soon.

"But email is decentralized". Actually not true, it is heavily centralized around gmail. Same true with bitcoin, it is centralized around exchanges.

[egypturnash]

Decentralize the funding; rely on users rather than advertising or VC. Developing Mastodon is now the full-time job of he guy who wrote it, thanks to Patreon. I think he's starting to hire a few people, too.

And a lot of Mastodon servers also have their own Patreons to help out with the hosting costs.

[ojr]

To be an accredited investor in the United States, you need to make at least $200,000 a year or have $1,000,000 in assets. Would you rather be funded by users of your app or accredited investors? I think in a free market, the most competitive companies will prefer the second option.

[egypturnash]

Would you rather be in charge of a machine designed to make money, no matter what the cost to the humans who use it, or would you rather be in charge of something designed to foster useful connections between people?

Would you be happier building a social network designed to keep people on it as long as possible, so that it looks like a good way to get a lot of eyeballs in front of the ads posted by your real customers, or would you be happier building one that people interact with for a small portion of their day in ways that generally leave them happier, and then get on with doing whatever else they're gonna do?

Not everything needs to be about making as much money as possible. And so far Mastodon has been doing okay by taking a more distributed approach: development is partially funded by users who care to pay something, and partially a volunteer effort by people with enough time to spare; hosting is funded by people spinning up a Mastodon instance for their friends or their community, and if it starts to get to be more than they can handle they close off new signups and/or start asking their users for a few bucks here and there.

Mastodon is, thus, not obligated to anyone but Gargron's vision of what it should be, and what the users of his software are willing to support. Sure, it's not gonna make any lists of "ten hottest unicorns in Silicon Valley". Who gives a shit?

Would you rather lie there on your deathbed thinking "I sure generated a ton of value for shareholders and helped a racist con-man get elected president", or "I sure helped a ton of people have a lot of conversations and connections"?

[ojr]

I use instagram, twitter, and snapchat because the user interface is sleek and the influencers of the network, not because of engagement growth hacks that are not sustainable long term.

Yes I would rather have a billion dollars than have a billion users with a dollar each. One is capitalism and the other is socialism, I think capitalism is just more natural.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Except this isn't about companies, but about users. I as a user don't care about what the company prefers, I care about whether their goals align with my goals. And if I fund them, chances are potentially higher that their goals are aligned with my goals.

[rainbowmverse]

Not everything has to be a business.