The Fediverse as it stands now is super ambitious, prospering, and honestly really exciting to see and be a part of.
I worry about the sustainability, though. The current model of donations, volunteer mods, and so on is working as intended, and the experience is flourishing. I see this model standing up for at least a couple of years as-is, barring any major changes of any kind.
My question becomes: How do we plan for the future entry of corporate influence into all of this? Because it will happen. I’ve watched most social media platforms and systems come into being in my lifetime, and also watched most of their demises. Money, marketing, and ads always come for them in some form.
What’s being done now to help prevent toxic corporate influence in the future? Can anything be done? The best part about defederated instances is a corporate influence could get ahold of one instance, but not all of them. Great in concept, but how do we plan for a future when corporate interest reaches these platforms and they throw enough money around to shake things up for the worse, as it always seems to?
Nothing a quick patch can’t change. Lemmy code is open source and can be edited by anyone running an instance. If it hasn’t been implemented it’s because it’s not yet a priority with all the influx of new users stability is more important.
I think it might actually be more complicated than a quick patch but I do think they’re going to end up adding that at some point, it would strengthen the entire fediverse