I run a small Mastodon instance. It has a purpose - it's a place for me and my friends to socialize, and talk about small things that matter to us. I grew up w

I run a small Mastodon instance. It has a purpose - it's a place for me and my friends to socialize, and talk about small things that matter to us. I grew up with the Internet so I can compare it to, say, Livejournal with its much-missed subtle privacy controls, or a local BBS with a Fidonet hookup, or a PHPBB forum, and find it wanting in some ways - but it's being run like one of those places. It is not being run for profit. It is not anyone's job. It has no VC investment to pay back. It is paid for about 50/50 by my money and by user contributions. And maybe a little by the fact that it's a nice audience for when I say "hey my commission schedule is open, who wants to trade some money for art?". I don't want it to be any bigger, and actively work to keep its growth slow. Personally I think the fact that the public sphere is a for-profit affair is a lot of why it's such a terrible thing, all that matters is keeping users around and feeding them more ads, doesn't matter if they're happy or angry, doesn't matter what they're being sold. I think that's a perfectly fine thing to make. A place to have a conversation without someone trying to turn it into a source of money. YMMV, if you have more grandiose dreams that you try to build on top of these shared protocols then good luck, and I will probably block whatever you do for breaking the "being or representing a corporation is a bannable offense" rule of my instance.