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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon's new US nonprofit | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago (4 children)

So... by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a "non-profit" (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We're watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago (1 children)

For non-profits (like 501(c)(3)'s) that's not unusual. Non-profits are more like specialized tools for the board of directors than like companies.

Source: First ten years of my career were at non-profits.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's an abuse of non-profits for financial engineering. They're intended to work exactly like companies, except without a monetary profit for shareholders.

Source: Got plenty of blank stares when I tried to set up a non-profit, "you're not yet big enough to think about tax evasion", they'd keep telling me 😒

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Them's who has the gold, makes the rules.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

It's not a good ratio, but assuming they managed to fill the three developer positions they were intending to when this interview was given last year and no one has left since then, that's 5 full time employees to 5 board members. I can't find more up-to-date numbers on the employee count unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is the enshittification fast-track, it feels like.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

How so?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Is the board paid? I thought it was a volunteer position, where you meet based on a certain cadence and vote on enterprise matters.

I'm also quite wary of corp/venture/capitalist influence on masto/fedi/décentralisation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I would presume it's not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they're working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it's hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Biz Stone, who allowed Nazis to run rampant on Twitter, so he could monetize it and sell it to Elon Musk? That motherfucker? Man, Mastodon first selling out to META in a closed door non disclosure pow wow, now this. The Mastodon folks wanna get paid. Alas, and so it goes.........

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Were Nazis allowed to deliberately ‘run rampant’ on Twitter pre-Elon? That’s a hot take.

Musk’s buying Twitter had nothing to do with it being ‘monetised’ as far as I see. Musk just offered such a stupidly large amount that the board had to say ‘OK, sure.’

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

They absolutely were, without question. That said, there's nothing this guy can do to make that happen on Mastodon instances he doesn't own.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Just a quick reminder that Twitter was banning 10s of thousands of accounts of extremists that breached its terms of service, including a certain ex president of the US. It was imperfect, but ‘running rampant’ is a stretch

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It seems like we agree on the facts, and I certainly won't disagree that it's worse now, but I would characterize Twitter's (pre-Musk) response to extremism as "measured, lacking and lethargic", before I would use "imperfect", which still implies "pretty good" and from my perceptive it was not good enough to make me want to use it. I think maybe we just have a different tolerance for hate speech.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

How many times did Trump show his true colors before getting banned? Twitter's moderation policies were better pre-Musk but they were far FAR from acceptable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

It's definitely true that Twitter consistently failed to raise the expected profit for stockholders, which is probably why they appreciated the wild overshot that Musk offered. I sort of appreciated that the company could stay so uncommercial for as long as it did, running only on hype.

Did Nazis use to "run rampant" on there before? Maybe not straight up, clear cut Nazis but there were some people who really dogwhistled in that direction going way back.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (3 children)

What do you mean by Mastodon selling out to Meta? Isn't Meta just building an ActivityPub based platform so we can talk to their users as far as I know. If they want to talk to us, then the onus is on Meta to stay compatible. If they aren't, then we just continue on as we have.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Please look up 'embrace, extend, extinguish' Meta should be met with open hostility in the fediverse. Mastodon losing nonprofit status in Germany, moving to the states and then appointing this guy leads me to think that mastodon has been compromised

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry I've been quoted EEE enough times. I really don't think that is the direction this will go down. If Meta actually embraces it, then the whole of the fediverse grows over all. Then, if Meta does extend the ActivityPib protocol in a way the that becomes incompatible with the rest of the ecosystem, we just let them go and do their own thing. ActivityPub already has a userbase, if they join us, and then later on cause problems then everything just goes back to how it is right now. The final E can't realistically happen because the existing ecosystem will just carry on exactly as it is now. If people on Threads want to communicate with us, then they need to speak the same protocol. If they don't, then they don't get to participate.

Do you genuinely believe that the whole community of the fediverse would just lie down and accept breaking changes to the protocol without resistance? There are too many talented and passionate people invested in this ecosystem, the absolute worst case scenario is the protocol itself gets forked, and again the exist communities just carry on. There is no extinguish time line. Everyone points to how Meta handled XMPP, please compare the user bases of ActivityPub vs XMPP. The world has changed a lot since then. Another example I'd like to point out is Hashicorp's Terraform. They explicitly tried to EEE, and the moment they attempted the final E, it was instantly forked, and the open licensed fork was adopted into the Linux Foundation and the ecosystem carried on.

Take that what you will, but I am reasonably convinced ActivityPub has enough support and community that any EEE attempt will inevitably fail. The front ends will change, the hosters will come and go, the open standard is here to stay.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The whole community won't lie down, but a lot of the visible members will spread their legs. This is the nazi at the table situation, and for a project that was supposedly created to get away from the toxic model of facebook and twitter this is something like a parody. The only people who get something out if this are the people who are not us. Now maybe you are right, maybe the community will prevail. It's just that it doesn't have to shoot its own feet every two minutes in the dumbest fucking way possible

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's sorta the curse of an open protocol is that anyone, even your enemies, can use them. I am no fan of Meta. I am a big fan of open standards, monkey's paw and all. It is not a case of tolerating the intolerant. To restrict Meta out of using ActivityPub is against the spirit of open standards. The protocol is no longer open, and THEN we really have something to worry about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Sure, but I would make an exception for meta because they are genocide enablers. Even if that's too much I don't understand people who keep saying it's all fine, it's great even.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

OK, but did you read the comment you were replying to?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

You're correct. ActivityPub is an open protocol and Meta, or more importantly anyone else, can use it however they want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I view the bigger issue as Meta is hostile towards humanity's privacy and freedom, and Mastodon leadership view Meta joining the Fediverse as an unqualified win. Meanwhile, I don't think Meta is interested in ActivityPub as a protocol to make Instagram Threads more appealing, I think they're overall much more interested in what data the can gain, and sell, analyzing the interactions between their own user pool and the rest of the fediverse that user pool interacts with.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well, fuck. It was fun while it lasted.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

There are any number of Mastodon forks out there. Misskey and its forks are really good. Pleroma and Akkoma are good, and so is Friendica.

Mastodon has always been an exercise in attention and influence seeking for Gargon. The rest of us don't need him or it. It's just a trademark.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This isn't both concerning and also totally in line with every move Gargon's made along the way. Nope nope nope!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I don't necessarily agree that this is concerning. I never thought of gargron of making good moves either though.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I would like to do more research on alternative non-profit governance structures. In my experience, non-profit boards seem to be just another mechanism by which the wealthy control decision-making in society. However, I don’t know what kind of structure would be better.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Workers co-op

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think workers coops are definitely better than private ownership but it seems like there should also be some involvement of the broader community being served (or negatively impacted in some cases) in the case of non-profits.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Workers coops tend to fall apart when they're made of non business savvy workers who just want to do their job. They tend to delegate the business "chores" onto someone more savvy... who ends up simply stealing from them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Source?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Primary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

So you don’t have one then? I’ve seen plenty of research on worker coops, and I’ve never seen any that supports this idea. Without any evidence I’m left to conclude that this is just capitalist apologia.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have first-hand experience, actually too much of it. Feel free to conclude anything, you can even set up a worker coop and get your own data; be the change you want in the world, and all that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So anecdotal? Have you worked in a worker’s coop? It’s hard to see how some workers taking advantage of others would be worse than the owner taking advantage of them but if you have seen it maybe you can explain how.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I've had family fund one, worked for some as a contractor, and had friends work for some more. They're all bankrupt now, and all of them for the same reason I've already explained.

It's worse than working for someone else, because they're funded by the workers themselves. When a worker's coop goes down, workers not only lose their jobs, but also all the capital they've put into it. Some fall into a sunken cost fallacy, try to refloat it... but without fixing the fundamental problem of having owners (workers) who don't care about the business, they eventually lose even more capital, often get in debt, and also lose their jobs.

When an owner takes advantage of a worker, at least the worker can look for another job without having to pay for the privilege.

Coops work well when members are business-savvy, and when they have a very limited scope with minimal capital investment, allowing members to leave at any time with minimal loss.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ok, this doesn’t seem to be the overall picture in the economic literature but thanks for sharing your experience. Given that, I can see why you hold those views.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I don't know about literature, but both the lawyers and notaries involved, warned everyone of the risks. I was also an idealist and skeptical of their advice at the time... then spent several years trying, to no avail, to make people understand what was at stake... until the warnings became reality... and again, and again, and again.

If it's not in the literature, then it should be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Cecosesola.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfE6Nsuaf50

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Love me some Anark—I did watch this but I don’t remember seeing much detail on how community governance works. Is it in there and I missed it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

From what I understood after I watched it and looked into it a bit more is that individuals have roles within the organization and are able to decide their own actions on how to fulfill that role. The actions are informed by the collective understanding of their goals and norms that are formed during their frequent meetings (which are very different in vibes from regular corporate meetings).

This is how I understood it works for most decisions but there a few decisions that fall back on voting which after the vote occurs the individuals are expected to carry out whatever was voted on.

So like it says in the video it is a largely informal structure but one that seems to work very well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

So the employees who are employed by donations, or all contributors? Not trying to throw a wrench in your suggestion, just wondering what this would look like for masto

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

I think this can be both a benefit and a risk, since Mastodon is still what it is and won't change because of a board. Biz could provide Eugen a lot of insight, but by the same risk, Eugen may want out and turn Masto profitable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

Mastodon’s service, an open source, decentralized social network and rival to Elon Musk’s X, has gained increased attention following the Twitter acquisition as users sought alternatives to X’s would-be “everything app” that felt more like the old Twitter of days past.

As part of the “fediverse” — or the open social web made up of interconnected servers communicating over the ActivityPub protocol — Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be locked into a centralized social network that can be bought and sold to new billionaire owners, like Musk.

“…we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn,” wrote Rochko on the Mastodon blog.

Mastodon’s day-to-day operations were unaffected by this change, as most of its income comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon.

It also received donations from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla at $100,000 apiece, which allowed the company to hire a third full-time developer this year.

In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra’a Al Shafei, a human rights advocate and founder of Majal.org; Karien Bezuidenhout, an advocate for openness and experienced board member across sustainable social enterprise; Amir Ghavi, a partner at law firm Fried Frank, where he’s the co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice; and Felix Hlatky, the chief financial officer of Mastodon since 2020, who originally incorporated the project as a nonprofit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funds.

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