The fediverse faces two major limitations, writes Alek Tarkowski in this widely cited article: "One has to do with its sustainability, as the commons-based peer production model on which it is built has clear limits to growth. And the second, and perhaps most crucial, has to do with a lack of participatory governance." He makes three recommendations: a participatory project to define a shared mission for building the digital public space on the basis of the Fediverse; greater involvement of public institutions; and a stronger social and institutional layer. All very fine, so far as it goes.
But let me say this: public institutions had no real interest in the fediverse or Mastodon before it suddenly became popular, and now they want to govern it. They criticize Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko for being a "benevolent dictator" (or worse) and yet leave him to develop 80 percent of Mastodon's code and run the largest Mastodon instance while doing nothing to increase his $36K salary or Mastodon's total $100K budget. And they conveniently forget that ActivityPub is a W3C standard with its own governance process. None of the things in Tarkowski's post are priorities. If he thinks social network growth is an imperative, and if he wants to wants to govern a social network, let him build it.
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