I will probably never get tired of having a hearty laugh on Mastodon Won't Survive Day.

Ulanoff's piece is such a great example of "tech bubble journalism" – where anything that does not fit in the round hole of Silicon Valley VC-fueled business models must necessarily be outside of the realm of possibility (and imagination).

Not only he completely ignores the existence of broader fedi, but he also compares Mastodon to Peach – a centralized social network that quickly fizzled out.

3/🧵

Peach fizzled out because it was trying to replicate the monopoly-based walled-garden business model of already existing social networks.

The problem is: that space is already overcrowded. To really have a shot at that, one would need resources comparable to the resources of the biggest players in that space. And even if you do have such resources, this might still not be enough – as the fate of Google+ illustrates.

Fedi is playing a different game; decentralization is a superpower.

4/🧵

Because fedi is not VC-backed, it does not need to generate hockey stick growth, and it is not going to end up under immense pressure to enshittify when early investors start demanding their payouts.

Because it is decentralized, it can try all sorts of things all at once. You want shorter posts? Or longer posts? Or an experience focused on photos? Or short videos? You want quote posts, or do not want them?

There's an instance for that™.

5/🧵

There is something about volunteer-run open infrastructure that keeps going even when corporations disappear. It can break through the limits of the profit motive.

For example, there's a tradition in the amateur radio community for helping in natural disasters, they have a parallel self-funded low-price communications infrastructure that doesn't need phone lines or internet or satellites or expensive gear (or even power lines if it's battery-operated). Corporations cannot provide this because it isn't profitable, so if the worst happens governments and communities often turn to amateurs.