That's sad to hear, but it makes total sense to shut down the server given its sensitive data, rather than hand it off to another person.
Mastodon/ActivityPub is a poor fit for a social network IMHO.
- Accounts should not be tied a single server and their continued maintenance.
- Private data and DMs should be end-to-end encrypted rather than entrusted with a single administrator.
- People don't want to self-host.
The core problem of a lot of social networks comes down to name aliasing, and who controls the name registry. In the case of nostr[1] this is not a problem because everything is using public keys. Another protocol is Farcaster[2] which plans to use a smart contract to maintain a name registry without requiring a single controller.
> - Accounts should not be tied a single server and their continued maintenance.
you can move your account to another instance in about 2 Minutes of work
> - Private data and DMs should be end-to-end encrypted rather than entrusted with a single administrator.
There is no "private data" on mastodon, I think it gets communicated enough that admins will have access to direct massages. it even says to you "Posts on Mastodon are not end-to-end encrypted. Do not share any sensitive information over Mastodon."
if you want more, use the IM of your trust ;)
> - People don't want to self-host.
True MOST ppl don't want to host, but they are a few that like it and even get money for providing a public service.
So I don't have to host smth, I just have to find someone hosting it.
Account migration is a redirect. Your posts do not carry over, and the experience is pretty clunky.[1] Your name alias is tied to the server you created it on, rather than tied to your identity and all that it carries (posts, data, network effects, followers).
Social networks should have private data and E2EE, plain and simple. And the hosting challenges and centralization is why we are here discussing Mastodon.
So it boils down to purchasing an NFT to participate, if yes, I’m not sure how long it will last. I’ve been trying to get a namespace on ENS since forever, and no payment processor wants me to buy eth. If that itself is a major hurdle I’m not sure how people will ever join.
I don’t believe it will feel like this. “Buying an NFT” will be more like “paying for a service.” You visit a Farcaster client, and click the buy account name/domain button, it triggers a stripe payment, and then you are given a private key for the account.
A savvy user could circumvent this and use the blockchain directly if they want to pay in crypto and/or cut down on the payment processing fee.
Mastodon/ActivityPub is a poor fit for a social network IMHO.
- Accounts should not be tied a single server and their continued maintenance.
- Private data and DMs should be end-to-end encrypted rather than entrusted with a single administrator.
- People don't want to self-host.
The core problem of a lot of social networks comes down to name aliasing, and who controls the name registry. In the case of nostr[1] this is not a problem because everything is using public keys. Another protocol is Farcaster[2] which plans to use a smart contract to maintain a name registry without requiring a single controller.
[1] https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
[2] https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol