If this place becomes the new twitter, the world will probably be a slightly better place for it and it's something I hope to see..
But somewhat paradoxically, Mastodon itself will become a worse place than it was, in part because of a few inevitable twitterlike characteristics it is taking on that simply go with the territory.
@pieist I'm an old Unix guy and have been on every 'chat' platform since compuserve and usenet. They all start with adventurous and witty people, then the masses come in. Google's G+ had circles and verified people but was dead. The only fun is with anonymous posts, but that soon dies because people want to use it to make money, or gain power (same thing). I'm enjoying this for a while, but we are starting to get the ads, and then people will stir up phoney outrage for power. I see it devolving to 'everybody has an instance' on AWS. So much fun.
@hasmis That's kind of how I'm seeing it. The wider culture brings with it its culture war, its demands for power and attention, and its ever diminishing signal:noise ratio.
If you're an old Unix hand you certainly remember that usenet meme: "You're seeing this because you have proposed a technical solution to a social problem." Mastodon and the fediverse are a fine technical solution, one which even obviates one or two social, or at least socioeconomic problems. But the majority of them are immune to technical solutions, and they're boarding now.
Socially the "many eyeballs" effect will help; things that might fly with one moderator set will be deflected by others, and this might result in a somewhat better equilibrium being achieved. I don't really hope for more than that.