> Hopefully Twitter’s collapse will lead to a more expansive conversation about the relationships between capitalist imperatives and the communication [and] inf

> Hopefully Twitter’s collapse will lead to a more expansive conversation about the relationships between capitalist imperatives and the communication [and] information needs of democratic societies. Key word being "hopefully". People either don't understand or care about the power differentials that these mega corps perpetuate and how it affects us, especially long term. People dislike Musk as a person, they'll be happier than ever jumping in bed with any other megalomaniac billionaire as long as they have the self-restraint to hide their cynical worldview. This doesn't mean that federation, decentralization and privacy is dead in the water, but it does mean that the stakes are high, and you need to offer a better product than what ad-tech bloat gives you today, so it's certainly not impossible. You need critical mass, ease of use, technical simplicity and resilience against abuse, and then strike at a good opportunity for mass migration. I don't think Mastodon today fulfills any of the criteria, let alone the core privacy features that are difficult to retrofit. I also don't think it ever will, because the OSS style governance model always leads to hard-to-use products and fractured communities whenever large and difficult decisions need to be made. (That doesn't mean that the fediverse can't be an excellent refuge for geeks and certain niches, which is great both for them and an incredibly useful lesson for future projects!) Realistically, I think the Signal model is our best bet, given the world today. An ideologically convinced medium sized business/foundation built on OSS tech, with decently aligned incentives, but that respects UX enough to build a product that everyone can use.