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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 19:16:35 JST Aral Balkan

   Dear Fediverse,

   Soon, some venture capitalist will put $5 million into a startup that offers free fediverse accounts with unlimited storage, etc.

   Unless every other instance instantly blocks such a service from Day 1, you can kiss your fediverse goodbye and say hello to a new Gmail. Once network effects kick in, they will make the rules.

   It _can_ happen here but you have an opportunity to kill it before it does.

   #centralisation #fediverse

   • Trolli Schmittlauch ???? repeated this.
   • Caleb James DeLisle (cjd@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 19:24:14 JST Caleb James DeLisle

     in reply to

     @aral Hmm, potentially a forgone conclusion, though I expect it to go like this:
     1. Someone writes a very nice mastodon-like app but they license it liberally (not AGPL)
     2. Someone makes a custom instance with some "cool features" which are not being upstreamed or shared
     3. Lots of cool instances with cool extra features
     4. Some of these instances become more commercial-centric
     5. When the VCs come, already too many political connections between instance admins to make blocking possible.

     Trolli Schmittlauch ???? repeated this.