@grammargirl I agree in principle and I've been trying to mostly post here and not on twitter (haven't tried Post yet) but ultimately people will go where there is better user experience and where there is more content. There are big issues that Mastodon can't easily solve because of how it's set up but competing commercial platforms can. to name just one: verification. News orgs, government entities etc will absolutely want it and will be very reluctant to join Mastodon without it. then there is money (of course), moderation, compliance with various legal thing etc.
@herid @grammargirl Verification is such a hard issue that - in a few hours - I wrote a plugin to solve it for ~90% of news organizations and government entities. By installing it, everyone from your local birder group to the New York Times and White House can verify contributors.
Money *is* a real issue, but not as big at scale if distributed. I've seen quotes of $0.05/user/month for +200k instances. I don’t think $1/yr subscription is a hard sell.
@opendna @grammargirl forgive me but I will not take your word that your plugin solves verification for 90% of news orgs. how does it work and what does it do?
