High Archmage of Qoto @higharchmage@qoto.org

A warning: there's going to be a concerted effort to re-centralize the Fediverse.

As we've just seen with the acquisition of pawoo.net, that's already happening.

What are you going to do to thwart this trend?

There's going to be a massive land grab of all these big instances. There will be lots of merging and and acquiring too.

My advice is that you all become *very* aware of who owns your instance and why.

Get to know your admins—make sure their values align with your own.

If you don't want to put your social media life in the hands of strangers, then self-host your own instance.

Like it or not, it should no longer be assumed that "volunteers" are running your instances.

The Mask Group, which now runs three large instances "has raised over US$50 million from private and institutional backers"—their words not mine.

BIG NEWS: Pawoo.net, the world's 2nd biggest Mastodon instance, has just been acquired.

The entity acquiring them is the Mask Group, an entity that also runs mstdn.jp and mastodon.cloud. They are also active in the so-called "Web 3.0" space.

If you haven't heard of pawoo.net, it's because many instances have de-federated from it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mask-network-acquires-pawoo-net-070000858.html

Everyone needs to be aware that Mask Group trades a crypto token.

This same entity now owns pawoo.net, mstdn.jo, and mastodon.cloud.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/21/encrypted-messaging-protocol-mask-network-acquires-mastodon-server-pawoonet/

Any study of #JohnMastodon must include parallel study of Mark, Matthew, and Luke Mastodon.

You may notice that tracking is more sporadic. This is because ADS-B is ground-based, over the water we rely on ADS-C and ACARS, which is satellite-based. An example below is from one of the hobbyists that feed satellite signals to ADSBExchange. The one in the back has been picking up signals for the current flight, this is a California-based ground station. In about 2 hours we will be picking up a signal from the UK one.