[nightpool]

One developer or sysadmin running an instance can support hundreds of non-technical users per server. This is a model that's already validated by mastodon, which has >1M registered users across thousands of servers (and ~40k weekly active users)

[dotsh]

And who writes on Mastodon? Mostly devs or Trump? Maybe Obama? Ellen? No? So no one will use it, ever. I'm not against technology as it is great, but looking on this as a normal user it's not appealing to me. Mastodon is like old fashion phpBB forums 15 years ago, closed groups who talk with each other. ;)

Mastodon will need to find business model sooner or later as internet isn't free as in beer because beer costs money and you can't handle 100m users with donations.

[ColanR]

> Mastodon is like old fashion phpBB forums 15 years ago, closed groups who talk with each other. ;)

As long as the members are part of several disparate groups, that's probably more of a good thing. Closer, tighter communities.

Also, I thought the bandwidth came from the users, since it's decentralized?

[dotsh]

People still need to pay for it. FSF would also die of hunger if it were not for people donating them money they have to earn first... so nothing is free.

[anigbrowl]

I do, though not too intensively. You are right about the difficulty of the economic problem, but I remember spending lots of time setting up a new thing called Linux to operate a small relay over dial-up when most people were using proprietary systems like Compuserve, so it's OK that the new technology is kind of slow or difficult. The important thing (IMHO) is that it be comprehensible and consistent, because it's easier to build the user interface and speed it up once it's already working.

[dotsh]

Yes, but so called "social media" isn't about installing anything to operate with. Twitter blow up the scene because it was super easy to start with and start sharing short sentences. In Mastadon you need to find a proper community, signup and start reading, but there is not interesting content there, no celebrities, no NASA, no Musk, no news magazines there is nothing that attracts typical users. But this is just my opinion. Until someone figure out a way to make Mastodon a one network to rule them all nothing will change.

[anigbrowl]

TWitter was doing something new and still had to work to get it's early users on. You need a different strategy in a mature market.

[dotsh]

Of course but imo it's not good strategy when you are dividing into hundreds of instances with 500+ users.