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Comment by dane-pgp | Hacker News Reader

> If Mastodon gets to hundreds of millions of users I will bet that one or two instances will grow very large, develop their own rules, and what do you have then?

Are you saying that these large instances would refuse to interoperate with each other? There are already signs of that happening even among small instances, but people are able to move their accounts from instances that are blocked by (or block) too many of their friend's instances, onto instances that have moderation policies they are more comfortable with.

Better yet, because all account actions are covered by an open API, it would be possible to create an account on a service that lets you make posts on multiple sub-accounts on different instances, and aggregate messages from your friends across them, which should heal any fracturing of the network for people who really have friends who (are in communities which) hate each other.

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> Are you saying that these large instances would refuse to interoperate with each other?

Likely. It's the same thing that happened to the big XMPP instances.

There are other ways that open systems turn closed. I'm not sure which one would happen to the Fediverse, but given how often it has happened, and the variety of proximate causes and exact end-states, I'm betting my money on the Fediverse turning closed somehow.

* The XMPP path where the biggest instances just decide they aren't going to federate with anyone else any more.

* The SMTP path where the big instances gradually accumulate anti-abuse mechanisms that make the barrier to entry too high for anyone who requires reliable delivery and isn't one of them.

* The IRC path where the network fractures into centrally-controlled coalitions that federate with each other but not with anyone outside the coalition.

* The NNTP path where the cost of running a server kept going up, the number of servers kept going down, and now if you want access to the entire network, you have to pay a subscription fee to one of three companies.

* The Git path where a single instance bundles value-adds that lead to most users just using the one central service.

The mastodon community of today is very different from what it would be if it had hundreds of millions of users. Once the plaform grows enough to critical mass, the costs of switching off that platform become high enough that it can close itself off without mass exodus.

The only way I see to end up with anything like what the author lays out is to mandate interoperability for platforms (possibly over a certain size). Unfortunately I have zero faith that our legistlators can craft and pass a bill that does that without bastardizing it to the point that is simply creates moats for the incumbent tech giants. I'd love to be surprised.

> mandate interoperability for platforms (possibly over a certain size)

The EU came really close to doing that with its new Digital Markets Act, but it seems that the interoperability requirement will (rather bizarrely) only apply to messaging apps and not social media platforms.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-act...

Mastodon is not built for a single community comprising "hundreds of millions of users". Individual users and communities will interact on a far smaller scale, much as they might with email.

While gmail never reached critical mass and completely closed off, it's anti spam efforts (among those of others) have made running a small mail server fairly impractical.

Ending up like email would probably be the best case result for mastodon. It is interesting to think about what stuctural aspects of email prevented hotmail or gmail from reaching critical mass and being able to fully close off interoperability.

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