I use Bluesky and Mastodon. Mastodon better hits where I want the fediverse to go but Bluesky is so much easier to use. Signup, UI, flagship app, feeds, and content is just so much less of a headache. But it feels like it’s a matter of time before it’s enshittified.
I was thinking about how much I hate big tech but there’s a lot of small and mid-size companies that I have neutral to positive views on. Canonical, Mozilla, 37 Signals, Odoo are the ones that come to mind. All of those have a revenue model but also actively support open source initiatives and developers. None are perfect but better than “big tech” and get more done than just donation based development.
It feels like there needs to be some for-profit companies (without ads and maintaining privacy) that can help support the development around ActivityPub and maintain apps and servers that are easier to onboard and easier to use. Does this exist?
What could be some non-evil revenue models? I pay $20/month for a blogging platform for my business website. Maybe have a service to host AP servers for businesses or journalists? Personal private encrypted cloud services like photo backups that are integrated with AP?
When it comes to hosting instances, yes, I do believe we have to universally keep investors/a for-profit structure out.
Putting these two in the same bag is a mistake, this is what OP and I are saying.
Context and scale matters. Even though both small and big companies depend “on profit”, the methods they use and incentives that drive them are wildly different.
That’s a ridiculous statement. Context is just a malleable term you can use for whatever. Nobody is saying context is irrelevant, you can’t remove context from any statement.
Scale however does not matter.
Of course the scale of the business matters. If scale doesn’t matter, a bunch of farmers selling their produce at a local market would be bad for their local community as Walmart.
You’re making a lot of inferences that allow you to be as myopic or broad as you want. You do not have a consistent view that has been laid out here. You’re just speaking in grand terms that are easy to defend no matter what. I didn’t say “local farmers at the farmers’ market” are the same as corporations, I’m saying scale is irrelevant because profit motive corrupts other values. You’re falling into the same hand wavy bullshit that people who go “but small businesses” fall into, as if those businesses aren’t exploiting people just as frequently as large corporations
Make an actual point.