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> what stops you to choose instance served by a company That when the goodwill of said company runs out, there is very little incentive for them to maintain th
by beardedman 4y ago
> what stops you to choose instance served by a company
That when the goodwill of said company runs out, there is very little incentive for them to maintain the service (other than trying to monetize it).
- imhoguy 4y agoThere is no free lunch. Somebody has to pay electricity bills and spend resources (time) on administration. But you have a choice: so you trust the dude in rural Canada who pays the server bills with his harvest earnings, or you agree with monetization T&C by giving up your privacy to ads corporation, or you pay a hosting company who manages your instance on VPS, or you setup your own instance, or you participate in coop scheme where you share instance with some common interest group, or you find some rich and trusted philanthropist. Otherwise the owner can't sustain the operations and may need to shut down one day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33120136)
- beardedman 4y agoI think I will trust/use/invest in the company whose business model depends on me using the platform.
- mmplxx 4y agoI'm still trying to make up my mind about all this, but it's likely that the fact that many servers are running subject to the same set of rules may increase competition since servers are highly substitutable, so a paid server business model may actually be more customer oriented because of the "Mastodon market" pressure it faces, isn't it?