{"id":27404,"date":"2023-01-03T22:51:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T22:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/03\/serious-investors-and-a-web3-takeover-have-come-to-the-mastodon-world-is-that-good-or-bad\/"},"modified":"2023-01-03T22:51:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T22:51:24","slug":"serious-investors-and-a-web3-takeover-have-come-to-the-mastodon-world-is-that-good-or-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/03\/serious-investors-and-a-web3-takeover-have-come-to-the-mastodon-world-is-that-good-or-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Serious Investors And A Web3 Takeover Have Come To The Mastodon World: Is That Good Or Bad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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from the Gmail-moment<\/i> dept<\/h3>\n

In one of Mike\u2019s recent posts about the radical reshaping of the social media landscape currently underway, he noted that Mastodon\/ActivityPub might have a \u201cGmail moment<\/a>\u201c, when bigger players enter and boost the sector. Although that could be good in terms of broadening the appeal of Mastodon, the emergence of huge, dominating \u201cinstances\u201d (Mastodon servers) might undermine the federated approach that makes Mastodon so interesting.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the only danger for the Mastodon world. The sudden emergence of Mastodon as a popular alternative to Twitter has inevitably attracted the attention of people with lots of spare money looking to invest in the Next Big Thing. The German software developer Eugen Rochko, the person who created the Mastodon software, told the Financial Times (non-paywalled version on Ars Technica<\/a>) that he had received offers from more than five US-based investors who were keen to put \u201chundreds of thousands of dollars\u201d into his project:<\/p>\n

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But he said the platform\u2019s non-profit status was \u201cuntouchable,\u201d adding that Mastodon\u2019s independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter,\u201d said Rochko. \u201cThe fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It\u2019s the difference in paradigms [between the platforms].\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rochko runs one of the biggest Mastodon instances, mastodon.social (disclosure: it\u2019s the one I use<\/a>). Another big instance is pawoo.net:<\/p>\n

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Pawoo, operated from Japan since 2017, is the second largest instance of Mastodon. It has drawn users from all over the world including illustrators, anime fans, novelists, and music enthusiasts since its inception. Accumulating around 800K users, Pawoo has become a \u201cplace to enjoy creative activity and unfettered communication.\u201d The Pawoo acquisition marks another milestone of the Mask team towards the building of a decentralized social network and a free, open internet.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That description is in a press release from Mask<\/a>. Few people in the West have heard about pawoo.net, even if they use Mastodon. That\u2019s because on mastodon.social and many other instances, access to pawoo.net is \u201climited<\/a>\u201d as a result of \u201cinappropriate content\u201d. The complex saga of why pawoo.net is mostly disconnected from the rest of the fediverse is described in a long post on the Ansuz blog<\/a>, written by Matthew Skala. As the blog post explains, the \u201cinappropriate content\u201d of pawoo.net involves sexualized drawings of children, which are unacceptable and probably illegal in much of the West, but largely unproblematic in Japan, where the majority of pawoo.net\u2019s users are based.<\/p>\n

Rochko may not be interested in selling some or all of Mastodon and mastodon.social, but the purchase of pawoo.net underlines the fact that those running other servers may be willing to do so. Pawoo.net has been bought by Mask Network, which describes itself<\/a> as bringing \u201cprivacy and benefits from Web3 to social media like Facebook & Twitter \u2013 with an open-sourced browser extension.\u201d The roots of Mask Network are in the world of cryptocurrencies \u2013 it even has its own native token, Mask<\/a> \u2013 so we may be about to see an infusion of Web3<\/a> ideas on this particular instance. <\/p>\n

The federated nature of the Mastodon means that it is hard to stop this kind of experimentation and commercialization, even if bans are imposed by other instances that are against this shift. How all this works out over the coming months and years is one of the key issues facing the burgeoning world of Mastodon and ActivityPub.<\/p>\n

Follow me @glynmoody on\u00a0Mastodon<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Twitter<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\nFiled Under: activitypub<\/a>, cryptocurrency<\/a>, eugen rochko<\/a>, fediverse<\/a>, japan<\/a>, mastodon<\/a>, tokens<\/a>, web3<\/a>
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Companies: google<\/a>, mask network<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n