Thus Gargron saying "it's their loss" when an instance blocks another instance for abuse. They're losing the numbers game! They're choosing not to be Bigger when they could be!

Thus Gargron saying "some people want tiny invite-only instances, fuck that". Why would you ever choose to be Small when you can be Big?

Thus Gargron's resistance to implementing local-instance-only toots. Federating makes numbers go up too! Notice how prominently the default instance frontpages display how many instances they're federating with, how many users, how many toots.

etc. etc. etc.

But here comes my unpopular opinion:

Bigger is not always better.
Growth is not always good.

I would vastly prefer small, minimally federated instances where people *truly* don't have to suffer from abuse and harassment, *actually* don't have to share space with Nazis. Where people can talk and share thoughts and kick cat pictures around without dogpiling and hate.

Fuck growth. Growth is value-neutral. If what you're getting more of sucks, it's not an improvement.

Mastodon has profited from the *perception* of being anti-abuse, while philosophically deprioritizing it, because being Bigger is always going to win out.

So I'm looking forward to seeing what the #ForkOffTogether folks come up with, and I'd eagerly cut itras.by over to that if it delivers the anti-abuse features vulnerable folks have been clamoring for from the beginning.

@sabrecat well even then, one could still consider that growth, but the better, more horizontal sort that gives more power to people.

@mirzaba True, like "growth" as used in the phrase "personal growth" etc. But that's not measurable with bigger numbers, so it's less appealing to the techbro set.

@sabrecat I'd be certainly interested in a system that allows for a small private community system for people with specific interests, a bit like an online club house.

It would complement the open federated systems nicely by giving different choices for different needs and circumstances.

@polychrome @sabrecat this sounds fucking food

@polychrome @sabrecat good*

@sabrecat Hmm. Intresting.

@sabrecat I think that view deserves more discussion than it gets in the Mastodon community.

Currently, Mastodon federates with any instance except the ones you blacklist. Some communities might prefer the opposite: federating only with instances you whitelist, or not federating at all.

@sabrecat

"But a Mastodon instance that doesn't do open federation is basically just a web forum," someone might argue.

True, but:

- Mastodon is pretty good forum software.

- It comes with an ecosystem of third-party client software.

- Unlike with most forum software, the community will always have the *option* of doing open federation, if they want that later.

It's worth noting that Pleroma makes it easy to have a non-federating server.

@Aaron Interesting to hear that Pleroma provides that functionality. I thought their philosophy was even more gonzo free speech maximalism of the "blocking is censorship" variety? hm!

@sabrecat Yeah, there's just a setting called "federating" that decides whether the instance talks to the fediverse. I guess some administrators like to use Pleroma to run standalone forums.