People often say, “The #Fediverse is bigger than just #Mastodon!”

But that’s not quite true; Mastodon is actually four times bigger than the rest of the Fediverse COMBINED. And its size matters:

@matt

If Mastodon is four times bigger than the rest of the Fediverse
combined, then that means to focus solely on Mastodon is to miss that other 20% of the universe.

So yep, it just goes to show that The #Fediverse is bigger than just #Mastodon!"

@volkris This may be a classic “both-and” situation! We should (1) encourage a flourishing, diverse Fediverse ecosystem, while also (2) ensuring that its most prominent platform makes the right moves.

@matt You ensure Mastodon makes the right moves by not singling it out. Making Mastodon the flagship of the Fediverse stifles innovation and suppresses diversity. Mastodon is the MS Windows of the Fediverse, and just as dangerous.

@volkris

@josemanuel @volkris Interesting take! Are there things that Mastodon’s leadership could do to mitigate the risk, in your mind?

@matt @josemanuel @volkris They could work closer with other fedi devs. They should consult with other fedi devs on mastodon specific features, because there’s no such thing as a software specific feature on the fediverse. This is how browser development works with multiple vendors competing against each other but still building software that can run any site.

An example would be Group support. Lemmy, GNU Social, and lotide have all been implementing support for groups collaboratively on the activitypub forum, and mastodon devs have rarely participated (I’ve never seen gargron there). But group support is on the mastodon roadmap; if history is any indicator, they’ll implement it in a way that makes sense for mastodon without looking at the prior art and we’ll have compatibility issues.