Fedi vs advertisers speculation
If the Fediverse becomes sufficiently popular, the following might happen:
1. Advertisers start using tags or direct messages to get into people's eyeballs.
2. We can block individual accounts, or servers that allow this sort of thing, but it's easy to set up new servers.
3. Moderators (or maintainers of public block lists) adopt a defensive policy of not federating with any server that hasn't been around and active (with believable human conversations) for at least, say, a year.
4. This makes it very hard, but not impossible, for individual people to set up new servers; they just have to create a community through some other means and hang out in their isolated space (or with each other) for the first year.
5. An industry arises of using AI to create thousands of fake "communities" that, once federated, let loose with the advertising.
Alternately, after step 1, we might start using anti-spam software to filter our tags/DMs the same way we currently filter our email.
@peterdrake I would consider Return On Investment (ROI). So long as there are other venues more likely to get a higher ROI, those will be used. I would think scammers and other such bad actors would be more a concern. Indeed, I'd be surprised if Mastodon hasn't had to deal with this already,and will forever always need to do so. Scammers have the mentality and toolkit to be particularly deceptive and can command a much higher ROI. For now, Twitter is better suited for the purpose, I would think.
