from the Gmail Moment department

In one of Mike’s recent posts about the radical reshaping of the social media landscape currently underway, he noted that Mastodon/ActivityPub could have a “Gmail moment,” as the biggest players enter and drive the industry forward. While that might be good in terms of broadening Mastodon’s appeal, the emergence of huge, dominant “instances” (Mastodon servers) could undermine the federated approach that makes Mastodon so interesting.

That’s not the only danger to the Mastodon world. Mastodon’s sudden emergence as a popular alternative to Twitter has inevitably attracted the attention of people with a lot of extra cash looking to invest in the Next Big Thing. German software developer Eugen Rochko, the person who created the Mastodon software, told the Financial Times (non-paywall version at Ars Technica) that he had received offers from more than five US-based investors who were willing to to put “hundreds of thousands of dollars” into your project:

But he said the platform’s nonprofit status was “untouchable,” adding that Mastodon’s independence and choice of moderation styles on its servers were part of its appeal.

“Mastodon is not going to become everything you hate about Twitter,” Rochko said. “The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be closed, bankrupt, etc. It’s the paradigm difference [between the platforms].”

Rochko runs one of the largest instances of Mastodon, mastodon.social (disclosure: it’s the one I use). Another great example is pawo.net:

Pawo, operated from Japan since 2017, is the second largest instance of Mastodon. It has attracted users from all over the world, including illustrators, anime fans, novelists, and music enthusiasts since its inception. With over 800,000 cumulative users, Pawo has become a “place to enjoy unrestrained communication and creative activity.” The acquisition of Pawo marks another milestone for the Mask team towards building a decentralized social network and an open and free internet.

That description is in a Mask press release. Few people in the West have heard of pawo.net, even if they use Mastodon. That’s because on mastodon.social and many other instances, access to pawo.net is “limited” as a result of “inappropriate content”. The complex saga of why pawo.net is largely disconnected from the rest of the fediverse is outlined in a lengthy Ansuz blog post, written by Matthew Skala. As the blog post explains, pawo.net’s “inappropriate content” involves sexualized drawings of children, which are unacceptable and likely illegal in much of the West, but are largely unproblematic in Japan, where most of the content is found. pawo.net users.

Rochko may not be interested in selling off part or all of Mastodon and mastodon.social, but the purchase of pawo.net underscores the fact that those running other servers may be willing to. Pawo.net has been bought by the Mask Network, which describes itself as “bringing the privacy and benefits of Web3 to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, with an open source browser extension.” The Mask Network’s roots are in the world of cryptocurrency, it even has its own native token, Mask, so we may see an infusion of Web3 ideas in this particular instance.

The federated nature of the Mastodon means that it is difficult to stop this type of experimentation and commercialization, even if other instances that are against this change impose bans. The outcome of all this in the coming months and years is one of the key issues facing the burgeoning world of Mastodon and ActivityPub.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon or Twitter.

Filed Under: activitypub, cryptocurrency, eugen rochko, fediverse, japan, mastodon, tokens, web3

Companies: google, mask network