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>Mastodon is a successful decentralized "web3" social media network.

No, that's not what "web3" means. Web3 is all about the blockchain (or you can call it "distributed ledger technology" if you want to distance it from cryptocurrency scams).

There's nothing blockchain-y about Mastodon or the ActivityPub protocol.

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web3 means different things to different people, much like how AI-powered means different things to different people.

All that matters is that the moneyed class is able to choose a slightly related definition of it that generates speculative value.

The fundamental idea behind web3 was decentralization. Of course the blockchain was seen as the primary method to drive that decentralization. Mainly so people could drive up the valuation of their crypto currencies.

Cryptocurrencies themselves could also serve as a example of a grain of success for web3.

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