Pebble, a startup that took on Twitter and failed, has returned from the dead -- as a Mastodon instance, it seems. The company announced last month that
The incentive might become more apparent as time goes on.
long term up-time commitments
stability guarantees
dedicated Moderation services
dedicated help service
performance guarantees
additional features or parallel services beyond ordinary masto (eg search, blogging, feed sorting/algorithms, or even fusion of additional platforms like lemmy)
active sponsorship of developers contributing back to masto
subscription is part of a dedicated app too (see, eg,
Mammoth)
Interesting. I feel like long term stability, up time and performance would be valuable to many users. In many ways I’d say just going on to mastodon.social is a bit of a cop out as it heavily dilutes the decentralised structure that is arguably the point of all of this. Multiple paid instances would be healthier. And there, as a user on a relatively peripheral instance but one that is paid-for, longevity and stability become increasingly valuable.
Otherwise, instance providers putting the work into trying to provide a relatively “complete” fediverse palette of tools while making it as easy as possible for the users could also be interesting.
It’s definitely an issue with small, niche servers unfortunately. Had a friend’s just go down unexpectedly this week with no warning to let the handful of people on there migrate, so they’re starting over from scratch. My craft server shut down a couple weeks ago although we did get a month warning there so could go through the proper migration process.
I try and donate to all my Fedi servers just to make it worth the admin’s while, because I prefer smaller servers in general but don’t want them to suddenly disappear!
Yea I’d say it isn’t a problem for anyone until it is. All of the notable examples of a server going down that I’ve seen were a surprise to its users. On top of that, I’d expect many have fairly hefty expectations of their server’s longevity. Like 10-15 years, more or less as long as they’ve been using Twitter etc.
The incentive might become more apparent as time goes on.
Removed by mod
Interesting. I feel like long term stability, up time and performance would be valuable to many users. In many ways I’d say just going on to mastodon.social is a bit of a cop out as it heavily dilutes the decentralised structure that is arguably the point of all of this. Multiple paid instances would be healthier. And there, as a user on a relatively peripheral instance but one that is paid-for, longevity and stability become increasingly valuable.
Otherwise, instance providers putting the work into trying to provide a relatively “complete” fediverse palette of tools while making it as easy as possible for the users could also be interesting.
Removed by mod
It’s definitely an issue with small, niche servers unfortunately. Had a friend’s just go down unexpectedly this week with no warning to let the handful of people on there migrate, so they’re starting over from scratch. My craft server shut down a couple weeks ago although we did get a month warning there so could go through the proper migration process.
I try and donate to all my Fedi servers just to make it worth the admin’s while, because I prefer smaller servers in general but don’t want them to suddenly disappear!
Yea I’d say it isn’t a problem for anyone until it is. All of the notable examples of a server going down that I’ve seen were a surprise to its users. On top of that, I’d expect many have fairly hefty expectations of their server’s longevity. Like 10-15 years, more or less as long as they’ve been using Twitter etc.