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I am not convinced thematic instances are a good thing. That means people interested in that topic lose all their communities if that instance goes away.
Absolutely. We've already set outselves up for eventual failure.
I was speaking to a friend registered with the tech.lgbt mastodon instance, and all I could think was "that sure makes that population vulnerable". There's so many instances that were paid as a one year server subscription by a hobbiest who might lose interest, and poof - those instances will be gone without warning.
Search will get better across instances over time. Instead of thematic instances, I'd really like to see focus on instance governance:
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Which are run by corporations, non-profits, academic institutions, or cooperatives who have an accountable board incentivized to maintain their instance?
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What are their sunsetting plans? Do they have policies in place to warn users if they become unsustainable?
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What are their funding models, and how well equipped are their technical staff?
I agree that everyone running an instance, that they expect to gain any users at all, should form a non-profit, at the very least for liability reasons. But trying to find a business model for running an instance is exactly against the point of why we are all here in my mind. If users like an instance and want to make sure it stays around then they should donate to it. That will make sure they have funding to keep paying the monthly server costs.
But if you do donate it is also fair to expect some amount of transparency in where the money is going and that the instance does have plans and failsafes. I think it is all stuff we are figuring out as we go together.
Excellent point!
Perhaps, then, I'll reframe this: I hope for greater attention and transparency to aid in navigating available servers by business model. An opt-in directory which may actually help people find independent private servers if that's what they're looking for.
One example I quite liked was the instance run by archive.org. It is strictly for their own employees and not available to the public. If I worked for them, I don't know that I'd opt in -- but I appreciate that it's offered!
Oh thats super cool that they do that. It would definitely be cool if there were more things like that or even publicly run instances that could be searched through.
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