Mastodon is at risk of falling into the trap that a lot of free/open source software does, where the idea of the software being “free as in speech” is expected to outweigh or explain away deficiencies in its usefulness. However, this ignores three salient facts:
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- Most people don’t give a thruppenny fuck about their freedom to view and edit the source code of the software they use, which they would not know how to do even if they cared;
- Most people are not ideologically opposed to the notion of proprietary software, and cannot be convinced to be because it is simply not important to them and cannot be explained in terms that are important to them; and
- When given the choice between a tool which is immediately useful for achieving some sort of goal but conflicts with some kind of ideological standpoint, and a tool which is not as useful but they agree with ideologically, they will probably choose the former.
The (now imminent) launch of Meta’s newest Twitter-like product based on the decentralized protocol ActivityPub has sparked a weirdly virulent reaction among some Mastodon instances, the other network built on the protocol and moonlighting as a Twitter alternative. The instances decided to pre-emptively block Meta’s new entry; this would prevent Threads – and by association Meta – from accessing posts on these instances, but is also effectively shutting these communities off from this newcomer with a great potential to scale.
On some level I can understand the fear of being overrun by a large corporation, with its vast resources, user base, and questionable morals; on the other, I think that these knee-jerk reactions will only hamper Mastodon’s growth potential and solidify its reputation as a space with convoluted and obtuse rules alienating new joiners. Case in point: even as Twitter struggles to function properly under Musk’s control, Mastodon hasn’t managed to regain its peak popularity of 2.5 million monthly users from late last year, currently sitting at 1.4 million monthly active users.
The situation reminds me of the recent squabbles over Reddit’s API changes, with small-time mods – or people running instance in this case – imposing their own rules and decisions on other members of the community. At least in the case of Mastodon those managing instances have invested money in running the servers, so their claim to control feels more legitimate than the people who started a subreddit and assume it’s inevitably theirs in perpetuity.
To be clear; it is absolutely fine to want to keep your existing community as is. Blocking servers that are actually infested with harassers and bigots is A-OK, and indeed a worthwhile leisure activity. It is the right of every instance to block whoever and whatever it likes.
It is not fine to act in the overtly hostile way that a lot of people did to newcomers. It is not fine to decide that whatever ideology you have about the Internet, politics or the world in general should also be enforced on everyone else. It is not fine to make sweeping and exclusionary judgments about anyone who is “using fedi wrong” by joining a big instance, despite this as noted being an objectively better experience. It is not fine to fail to remember that other server admins are humans who are capable of making errors of judgment, just as everyone else is. It is not fine to react in the way a lot of users did in November, as assuming that anyone who was not 100% on board with their particular brand of anarchism should be silenced, and then wonder why everyone fucked off.
The article I linked above lays out a comprehensive view of the difficulties facing Mastodon, and I largely agree with this opinion. There are many past examples of open source software failing to compete with ‘corporate’ applications: Linux vs. Windows, Firefox vs. most browsers than came after it, Photoshop and Office vs. the many open-source alternatives launched over the years. People may love to criticize capitalism, but here is an example where for-profit motives deliver better results than ‘let’s come together and code something cool in our free time’. A company can dedicate staff for quality control, for long-term support, to implement features for its customers, not its developers, even for privacy and security, areas that open-source projects don’t necessarily prioritize. And if you’re using an application for your own business, you will expect and demand these ‘boring’ aspects where open-source products don’t excel.
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