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Comment by piaste | Hacker News Reader

This is a truly bizarre critique, because it seems completely backwards in every respect.

The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place.

And all other alternatives are far worse in that specific aspect you bring. There is a very mild barrier to running your own Mastodon/PeerTube/etc. instance (you don't even have to self-host, you can get one on Masto.host or similar services). But it is flat-out impossible to run your own Twitter or Youtube or Discord.

And most cloud services adhere strictly not just to Western cultural norms, but specifically to Bay Area cultural norms, which are even more narrow.

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> The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place.

Of course that selling point isn't, in practice, what's happening, as anyone observing or participating in the space for the past couple years knows.

Fediverse is a lonely place if no one wants to federate with you, but that's where you'll end up if you don't yield to the specific set of concerns and demands of a small minority that infected the main network, and rules it under threat of "do not federate with those we don't like, lest you find yourself on that list too".

You got it. Talk about the outcomes. It's like saying this thing is inclusive but only if you're one of us. We're willing to have the hard conversation but not at my expense.

In the real world, the #1 selling point at the moment is merely that the fediverse is not Twitter. The supposed freedom of running server instances is an exaggerated benefit. Being federated with the big instances is essential for reaching the general public with your content, and that’s important for any academics doing pop-sci outreach. Moreover, as the other person mentions, even if your server conforms in every way with Mastodon founding-generation demands, your server can get defederated from the big instances if it federates with a server they don’t like.

> The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place.

But you're ignoring that this is dependent upon not being blacklisted from the majority of (and the biggest) servers for not agreeing with their politics.

Folks regularly make the comparison to e-mail, so let's go with that: anyone can run their own e-mail server and send/ receive e-mail from users on other servers. We would find it unacceptable to blacklist an e-mail server because of the politics of the owner or users. Spam, sure, but not _politics_.

The main Mastodon developers also run the main instance, run a directory of other instances, and blacklist instances which do not follow their politics.

So anyone can run their own instance, but the other important part of federation is BROKEN.

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