I would have been more interested in Cohost if they weren't actively hostile to federation. Their eventual shutdown always seemed inevitable to me, and without federation + account portability, there would be no easy offramp when they failed.
You could say the same of almost all corporate social media, and I am phasing them all out too.
It could have helped their revenue problems indirectly if it meant being able to access more users and content, not only the people who use and enjoy Cohost. People love to talk about network effects, and something like the fediverse means you can start with however many users there are on the fediverse on day one of turning on federation.
For me, lack of federation meant they were dead on arrival, just like every Google product can't be trusted to keep existing (and I would never start using a new Google product). Any individual fediverse project could shut down, but the fediverse continues and is probably unkillable like IRC or RSS at this point, even if it's not as widely used as one might like.
I am an admin / mod for a Mastodon server that is supported by donations from the community. I have not put my own money in the pot for a while, because I'm donating a lot of time to run it.
But I would pay if I had to, and I am considering paying for a GoToSocial server to experiment with an allowlist network:
You might be surprised to learn that many people do donate money to their instance of choice. Enough to cover server and admin costs? Probably not. But it shows some willingness to pay.
kevingadd|1 year ago
skyfaller|1 year ago
For me, lack of federation meant they were dead on arrival, just like every Google product can't be trusted to keep existing (and I would never start using a new Google product). Any individual fediverse project could shut down, but the fediverse continues and is probably unkillable like IRC or RSS at this point, even if it's not as widely used as one might like.
rglullis|1 year ago
skyfaller|1 year ago
But I would pay if I had to, and I am considering paying for a GoToSocial server to experiment with an allowlist network:
https://gotosocial.org/
https://codeberg.org/oliphant/islands/src/branch/main/ion
My server: https://jawns.club
Our finances: https://opencollective.com/jawnsclub
We're currently paying for managed Mastodon hosting on https://masto.host/
discardedrefuse|1 year ago