Lots of smart people saying the same thing - there are dangers ahead for the fediverse that aren't really being addressed right now. What happens when the inevitable consolidation comes knocking?
#SocialCoop has a model that is one way (maybe) out of that trap. But I think we need to seriously consider an upper limit on size, and splitting into multiple coops.
@protean Interesting read. What troubles me about this is that it seems like it’s not something that can be controlled for and needs to be addressed in the codebase. Getting engagement shouldn’t kill your instance. As for social.coop, I don’t like the idea of us splitting up. I do wonder about us scaling up though, and what the costs of that would be.
@protean @JosephAndriano I don’t know if splitting up is the way to think of it, how about “budding”. What if we set a cap on our size capacity, both in terms of technical limit & the limit for effective cooperation, & then helped another smaller coop grow out of us, that we maintained close relationships with. Because a 20,000 person coop isn’t really much of a coop. You really see this with the Twin Cities (MN) grocery coops around me as they’ve grown & adopted corporate governance models.
@yerald @protean Upon reflection, I think you have a good point. One thing I’m noticing is a lot of instances starting up around geography or shared interest. If these instances are going to be sustainable in the long term, they really should be set up as co-ops. We should be encouraging more instances to become structured as co-op, perhaps rather than encouraging general instances around the idea of being a co-op.
@yerald @protean @JosephAndriano
Maybe we should define two upper limits for user accounts on #SocialCoop:
- the point at which we must dedicate resources and decision-making explicitly to helping a new co-op form ("budding")
- the point at which we close registrations.
That way we may be able to avoid a situation where we have to say for a long period: "Sorry, doors are closed."
@eloquence @yerald @JosephAndriano I'm happy to help keep the doors open right now as I see it as a form of mutual aid, supporting #twexit. But I also think we should try to have a process to support the creation of affiliated instances, and try to remain small.
@yerald @protean @JosephAndriano
Personally, I think a regional split could be interesting -- if we survey our existing users, we may already be able to discover regional clusters.
I think it's also worth looking to what @evan and other involved folks are doing with #CoSocialCa - maybe we could explicitly partner with them.
@eloquence @yerald @protean @evan Very interesting points! I know there’s been some discussion about Pixelfed. Maybe we should also bud for type of service too?
@eloquence @protean @JosephAndriano @evan I think it'd be a sweet idea to explicitly partner with #CoSocialCA sooner rather than later. There may be insights we can share with them, & they'll probably eclipse us in size-complexity real fast once they get launched and learn a TON. I doubt their membership will be as explicitly coop-minded, so we could sort of become the mastodon instance focused on cooperative interests, while many general-purpose cooperatively owned instances like them emerge.
@yerald @eloquence @protean @JosephAndriano @evan great discussion. Better to plan for growth and not need the plan than not to plan for growth and risk bad outcomes for the service or the community. The #CoSocialCa website reminds me of the #SocialCoop website in some ways. They seem like a great potential partner https://cosocial.ca/
@resing @yerald @eloquence @protean @JosephAndriano This sounds kind of interesting. Obviously social.coop is a big inspiration. What next? A call or email?
@evan @yerald @eloquence @protean @JosephAndriano I’m new to this co-op and not quite sure how we’d best proceed. I’m glad you’re interested in a next step. I’m hoping some of the #socialcoop veterans on this thread may be able to help connect the dots to your co-op Mastodon movement
@resing @evan @yerald @eloquence @protean @JosephAndriano let’s do it!
Who else overlaps the 2 groups? How formal should this call be? Do we want to include working group representatives, or someone who has been around since the the foundation?
@django @resing @evan @yerald @eloquence @protean I feel like there are a few ideas floating around here. Are we thinking about a general roadmap for the way forward? A Pixelfed instance? More specific regional co-op instances? I think we could get something started on Loomio if we had a specific proposal.
@JosephAndriano @django @resing @yerald @eloquence @protean my main ask is a call or other conversation to talk about what we're doing with #CoSocialCa . We've read the how to run your own Fediverse document, and we wonder if there are more details worth discussing.