mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

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When I talk about the importance of going all in on the Fediverse, I speak based on experience.

At Opera we built a massive user community. When I quit, we had something like 35 million registered users and 35 million monthly visitors.

The new Opera management did not see the value of that. They believed it was cheaper and better to just use Facebook and that investing in your own community was a waste of money. So they closed down MyOpera and built a following on Facebook and Twitter instead. Then they got caught by the bait and switch when Facebook changed and you would no longer reach your audience, without paying. Later on Twitter changed as well.

This is important to explain to companies and institutions as they go shopping for social media sites to invest in. The best investment is clearly in your own site, being part of the Fediverse. It is not even all that expensive to do. It may take longer to build, but at least it is your own.

Not saying you cannot build a following on those other sites, but your long term strategy should be the Fediverse with your own server.

We try to lead the way here and thus we build Vivaldi Social. Not just for our selves, but to make a point and support the Fediverse.

Nicole Parsons

@jon

Rent-seeking middleware can always be used to extort concessions and hijack your user base of customers & vendors

1. Apple & Spotify - rent seeking middlemen between musicians & music lovers

doctorow.medium.com/https-plur

2. Health insurance - rent-seeking between health care providers and patients
pnhp.org/news/the-economist-re

3. RealPage - Rent-seeking between landlords & tenants

brianlovin.com/hn/34926683

4. Search engines

pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/sub

A Vaudeville dancer on an old-fashioned stage, caught mid-dance-step, standing in front of a Patreon logo.. His pockets bulge with cash. He has been decapitated and blood fountains from the stump of his neck. His decapitated, bloody head lies in a pool of blood on the stage next to him. Over the stump of his neck is an original six-color Apple logo, modified so that the ‘bite’ is actually a bloody, fang-filled mouth. The scene is surmounted by the Apple ‘Think different’ wordmark.
Medium · Apple vs the “free market” - Cory Doctorow - MediumBy Cory Doctorow

@Npars01 @jon
Delivery services (not the drivers)
I think it was really predatory delivery services that called my attention to middlemen being the biggest growth industry this century.