mastodon.ar.al is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
This is my personal fediverse server.

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At least a part of the this whole debate about #Meta and the #Fediverse seems to boil down to the most persistent argument on #Mastodon: People saying, well ***I*** have all the connections I want here, so why are you complaining about missing people or communities?
Meta is so so many people that could get to know and embrace the #Fediverse like many did after the #TwitterTakeover.

It's all about the protocol, not the platform, right? So if one of the biggest actors in the #Internet embraces the protocol, that's a win, isn't it?

Let's see, what they are building with regards to the aspects like #onboarding, #search and yes, #funding. If there's something good, maybe others will learn from it and make the existing instances better (for #newcomers).

@mho They are a publicly-traded trillion-dollar Silicon Valley surveillance machine that exploits your behaviour for profit. We know what their business model is. We know they see success as a zero-sum game. None of that is going to change. What exactly are we waiting to see?

It’s like sheep inviting a wolf to dinner to see what it’s going to do. It’s going to have dinner, of course. You’re just not going to like what it eats.

@aral @mho how do you want to prevent it? It's an open protocol.

But I see the danger. Good example: Google and XMPP (and all other open protocols they sabotaged)

Aral Balkan

@keywan @mho The only way I see of delaying it, given the architecture of ActivityPub and Mastodon, etc., is social pressure. And they doesn’t seem to be present where it would be most useful.

@aral @keywan
I understand your point. But I think, Meta is not only the wolf but also all the people, that don't know about the #Fediverse and could see for themselves, what it's about. Maybe this is the way, to get more people here (in the End by leaving #P92).

Of course, there is danger for the protocols, but you can't do much anyway. The more the #Fediverse grows, the bigger the interest.