Not willing to give them ideas so fast.
That’s something that popped in my head as soon as I started in here, not so long ago.
But there’s nothing to prevent that, right? I mean, Meta could very well create a meta instance on Lemmy or Kbin or Mastodon or in all of them, bring a bunch of users, sprinkle in some ads because why not.
Sure, they could be defederated from more restrictive insfances. In the bigger picture, every other instance could boycott them, but they would surely federate among themselves (Elon meets Mark, ugh). They also have all the computational power and would have no problem being the largest instances in the Fediverse.
Then what? Is that feasible? Probable? My utopian future about a free, descentralized Fediverse is a lie?
Corporate instances would be a sign that this thing is gaining traction. Obviously there are downsides, but it would give a lot more credibility to the fediverse and get more people to give it a try. And someone has to pay the hosting costs anyway. Financing will increasingly become an issue as user numbers grow. The point where you can’t just do this as a hobby project any more is going to come sooner rather than later.
Will it, though? I thought one of the big points of the fediverse is that you can host your own small instance, federate with other instances, and get the content you care about. It’s certainly not easy enough for most people to do right now, but it seems like ernest and others are working on making it easier.
You can for yourself, hosting a large instance for others does require time, financing, a legal entity (if for nothing else, liability purposes). Most people are much more likely to use what is already there unless they have an itch to do it themselves.
Mastodon is a non-profit that also hosts the largest mastodon instance, ultimately I think there will be a ton of small hobbiest instances and a few big ones - they should preferably be run by non-profits to help avoid the current Reddit situation (more like other open source projects).