Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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Big-tech is evil but could Fediverse benefit from more small/medium for-profit companies? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I use Bluesky and Mastodon. Mastodon better hits where I want the fediverse to go but Bluesky is so much easier to use. Signup, UI, flagship app, feeds, and content is just so much less of a headache. But it feels like it's a matter of time before it's enshittified.

I was thinking about how much I hate big tech but there's a lot of small and mid-size companies that I have neutral to positive views on. Canonical, Mozilla, 37 Signals, Odoo are the ones that come to mind. All of those have a revenue model but also actively support open source initiatives and developers. None are perfect but better than "big tech" and get more done than just donation based development.

It feels like there needs to be some for-profit companies (without ads and maintaining privacy) that can help support the development around ActivityPub and maintain apps and servers that are easier to onboard and easier to use. Does this exist?

What could be some non-evil revenue models? I pay $20/month for a blogging platform for my business website. Maybe have a service to host AP servers for businesses or journalists? Personal private encrypted cloud services like photo backups that are integrated with AP?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Even non-profits aren't immune to hostile takeovers. OpenAI is a for-profit company controlled by a non-profit, and that hasn't stopped them from turning into something indistinguishable from a regular for-profit company. They've also been making noise about abandoning the fig leaf of the non-profit.

Mozilla is another one where nominally they're a for-profit controlled by a non-profit, but they're now getting into shoving ads in your face just like any other company.

It is harder to turn bad when you're a non-profit but not impossible, without something of a poison pill that makes it unacceptable to for-profit takeovers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Didn’t say they were immune.