@homegrown I don't really understand what recommending accounts has to do with avoiding a monopoly. Like, whether you recommend a mastodon.social account should be decided based on whether you think the account deserves the recommendation, not which server they're on. You're not telling people to switch to that server, you're telling them to follow an account there.

@homegrown I will add, for clarity that the beauty of the fediverse is that you can defederate whoever you wish. I will always defend that.

@homegrown I get the concern I really do but I'm unconvinced that dot social is destroying the fediverse.
If anything the culture of the fediverse is often its own worst enemy more than any large,popular instances.
I get it.I'm inclined to that viewpoint myself but over time I've come to see that I'm fine with a large,popular, easy to onboard instance.I will eventually move (I keep wishing for data portability but factional devs & cost burdens nature of a non corp fedi = unlikely). Much respect.

@homegrown Defederating would be dumb and non-productive, in my opinion.

@homegrown @FediFollows Defederating at 50% sounds like a bad idea. It would split the fedi into two separate, but equal in size, parts.

@homegrown

I'd tend towards expressing that 28.7% is already sufficient to stop recommending mastodon.social, or any other big* server; that's too high a concentration for a decentralised network.

I'd therefore turn around and positively NOT recommend mastodon.social at this point. Obviously, nothing against mastodon.social or it's people, but for the general health of the network, (and for humanity!) Waiting until 40% would be too late.

I would not be so worried to establish at this time any hard percentages for limits or de-federation, I'd just hope that a campaign for conscientious of the reasons why not to join mastodon.social, the importance of small servers, and many of them, would be enough, and then deal with the other scenario if we ever get there, hopefully not.

* I'll admit I have an ideal about #fediverse servers, which is that the "community" of users on a server should reflect a #community that shares a reasonably close connection in some sense, AFK, IRL or whatever way you want to say #offline. This in itself should limit numbers, without having to explicitly place those limits.

Of course I accept other people have other valid notions and do not share this idea, so some larger servers may work too.

@homegrown@social.growyourown.services @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services this is such a stupid conntroversy. Power laws exists everywhere, and ALSO we have bigger fish to fry than mastodon.social. JFC!

@homegrown @FediFollows other than centralization itself, is there anything specifically wrong with mastodon.social?

@homegrown @FediFollows You dismiss people who want to be on Mastodon and not on Facebook, and thats about it. Just give me the default and make it work and easy.

But everyone has options, can choose for themselves and can still communicate with others. Thex can also switch over at any point to another instance, if they choose to.

Just because its decentralized, doesn't mean _everyone_ wants to go on a small instance hosted in the basement of someones home on a Raspberry Pi.

@homegrown

I'd suggest announcing to followers on M.s. a plan to defederate in (say)12 months time if the Fediverse is more centralised than it was at the time you announced the plan.

Works on a clearly understandable timeframe and makes anyone blaming you look absurd since you're just sticking to your ideals and doing exactly what you announced when you said you would.

Plus, if anyone is really angry, yet didn't decide it'd be worth moving instance when they'd a whole year, they're no loss.

@homegrown @FediFollows @stufromoz Could there be a policy which recommends other large instances in a rotating selection?

@homegrown @FediFollows instead of bashing mastodon.social, one should spend time building a more welcoming instance with better community and moderation.

@homegrown @FediFollows

My extra frustration with the big blue button is their response if ~"we don't direct anyone to sign up with just us". It's either deliberate or indicative of a complete lack of understanding...
neither which should be the server new people are being pointed at.

@homegrown @FediFollows Defederating the entire server sounds agregious, especially as there are some decent people on there.