I'm yet another person who's skeptical that this project and its instances will be able to solve any issues that currently plague the more popular, profit-based social media platforms.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it worsens things. Let's take the widely-known phenomena of 'information bubbles' - where your feeds/networks only serve you information that confirms something you already believe/some worldview you already have.
Not only would a mastadon instance server be prone to attracting users of the same mindset - cross-posting from other sites would be problematic. What if posting on instance A doesn't violate instance A's content guideline terms, but does violate the content guidelines of instance B? Users of B are less likely to see certain content from A. In some ways that's worse than the one-instance for profit networks. As much as I dislike the snarky reply to bad-retweet phenomenon - at least opposing ideas are being discussed there.
Plus, these instances can be run by anyone, and those people can set up any terms they want. Someone like Alex Jones could set up his own mastadon instance, and have his own content guidelines, and wrap his followers in an even 'thicker' information bubble.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it worsens things. Let's take the widely-known phenomena of 'information bubbles' - where your feeds/networks only serve you information that confirms something you already believe/some worldview you already have.
Not only would a mastadon instance server be prone to attracting users of the same mindset - cross-posting from other sites would be problematic. What if posting on instance A doesn't violate instance A's content guideline terms, but does violate the content guidelines of instance B? Users of B are less likely to see certain content from A. In some ways that's worse than the one-instance for profit networks. As much as I dislike the snarky reply to bad-retweet phenomenon - at least opposing ideas are being discussed there.
Plus, these instances can be run by anyone, and those people can set up any terms they want. Someone like Alex Jones could set up his own mastadon instance, and have his own content guidelines, and wrap his followers in an even 'thicker' information bubble.