Well I can see one thing that kinda belies your point of view at present. Stability. Some people have presciently worried that their instance can implode, taking all content a user has made with it. Larger instances that are more stable, that have more backup infrastructure and ongoing commitment to operations, could out-compete smaller instances. Why this might arise, could be a historical accident of successful crowdfunding campaigns or something. I’m not sure how someone might do a better job of securing more server resources than others. Obviously a deep pocketed corporation who wants to influence the Fediverse, could do that.
But those are unrelated. We’re talking about admins not acting in the best interest of the users so they can pump up numbers and sell their instances. You’re talking about related concepts, but different motivations and intentions.
There is only one metric for a social network, the number of users.
Youtube channel? subscribers
Twitch channel? subscribers
Twitter? Followers
That’s about who gathers the most people, end of the line. If an instance managed to become a pole of gravity then it will be worth money.
And before you tell me that you can subscribe to a different instance, well, you can also subscribe to a different social network.
but fine, we disagree.
An instance isn’t the social network though. The fediverse is. You’re missing the whole point.
Well I can see one thing that kinda belies your point of view at present. Stability. Some people have presciently worried that their instance can implode, taking all content a user has made with it. Larger instances that are more stable, that have more backup infrastructure and ongoing commitment to operations, could out-compete smaller instances. Why this might arise, could be a historical accident of successful crowdfunding campaigns or something. I’m not sure how someone might do a better job of securing more server resources than others. Obviously a deep pocketed corporation who wants to influence the Fediverse, could do that.
But those are unrelated. We’re talking about admins not acting in the best interest of the users so they can pump up numbers and sell their instances. You’re talking about related concepts, but different motivations and intentions.