On the Fireside Fedi interview with Jerry ( the admin of Infosec.Exchange Mastodon instance ) a scary truth was suddenly revealed ( on 34:11 ): Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket. Donations to the instance barely cover any of that. And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.
This is the best long term strategy. News orgs should be hosting their own Mastodon instances at the very least. Same with schools and government.
It solves a number of problems - for them. So many news organizations and government offices are reliant on Xitter. That means that they are at the mercy of the owner of the platform for their messages to the public. Hosting their own instance puts them in charge. They can get out messages reliably and the public can trust that they are who they say… Just like an email address or URL.
Schools pay lots of money to private corporations to run bespoke university messaging systems, and are likewise reliant on those companies to provide administrative services such as moderating. Moving those communications in-house will be cheaper and simpler.
We should all be pressuring schools and local governments to adopt these technologies.
But that can not be the only solution. My university offered email accounts for every student. In 1999 this was a very big deal because the commercial services were super limited - Yahoo! Mail offered 2MB, IIRC. But the account was only available while you were an student.
I think it’s the best starting point. University and government resources can handle the volume and will motivate widespread adoption. In one sense, it is only kicking the can down the road, but it is kicking it into a future that will be better prepared for these questions.
I am not disagreeing, I just think these options are not mutually exclusive. We should try all of those that we can. And while I can not force schools and universities to implement their own Mastodon instance for their students, I can pay a little bit per month to support developers and service providers of the libre platforms out there.