I don't mean to downplay the achievements of Mastodon in any way, but what the author is describing in the example of Mellified.Men sounds like a glorified foru

I don't mean to downplay the achievements of Mastodon in any way, but what the author is describing in the example of Mellified.Men sounds like a glorified forum. (Yes, I know it's more than that due to federation.) Every few years the "group discussion / chat" concept gets reinvented on the internet, and that's all fine and dandy, but I still think there is immense value in having a centralized identity on a service that everyone is using. The problems of Facebook and Twitter have less to do with the fact that they are centralized and more to due with the fact they are funded by ad revenue and the constant pressure to impress the public stock market. We need a centralized service driven by micropayments from the users themselves, with little to no advertising. App.net was a step in the right direction, and its downfall was more a result of missteps in execution rather than a problem with the core idea. I fear that might never happen largely due to the inherent structural problems of VC funding. It costs a ton of money to run and scale a social network, and most VCs will be looking to recoup their investment using the traditional means of web-scale revenue (advertising). So what's the solution? My personal hope is something based on blockchain cryptocurrencies. But we'll see if anything takes off in that vein or if the evil empire of Facebook just continues to win the day.