Mastodon doesn't do enough to prevent centralization of control - when you make an account to use the network, you're making that account on some specific server. This ties your ability to communicate on the network under that identity both to the server operator, and to the domain name of the server. A fediverse server can go down because its maintainers deliberately shut it down or lose interest and stop maintaining it; a domain name can be lost or taken by a government (see the queer.af debacle). The administrators of a fediverse server can also decide to censor your posts or remove your account if they don't like what you post - and it's hard to argue that they don't have the right to do so because they're the ones running the server and storing your account as a row in their database.
If you run your own single-user fediverse server, you are the admin yourself so most of these aren't problems (although you still don't control your domain name). But it's difficult for most people to maintain their own social media server, so most people don't do this, meaning that they are still subject to the petty tyranny of their social media provider. It's just that instead of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, it's whatever random person runs the server that they randomly picked to put their account on.
Regarding your first paragraph. Everything you said is true, but that's better than centralizated platforms like twitter and facebook. Yes or no?
And let me add: no model will prevent against everything. Yes, you're tied to an instance and XYZ - ok, so just pick one of the largest N instances to mitigate that. That's better than having 1 to pick from.
> Regarding your first paragraph. Everything you said is true, but that's better than centralizated platforms like twitter and facebook. Yes or no?
Yes, the fediverse ecosystem is strictly better than using one monolithic social media platform run by a world-famous corporation. The fundamental fediverse account model is still fatally flawed though, and can't be a final solution for self-sovereign social media.
> Yes, you're tied to an instance and XYZ - ok, so just pick one of the largest N instances to mitigate that. That's better than having 1 to pick from.
The fundamental problem isn't having instances to pick from, it's being able to switch instances if and when the people running your instance stop allowing you to use their compute resources to post. Your fediverse identity is tied to whatever specific instance you make the account on, and you effectively can't switch it to another instance - you just make a new account and tell people about it manually. Again, strictly better than having no choice other than Twitter, but it doesn't really free you from someone else's control over your social media posting.
If you run your own single-user fediverse server, you are the admin yourself so most of these aren't problems (although you still don't control your domain name). But it's difficult for most people to maintain their own social media server, so most people don't do this, meaning that they are still subject to the petty tyranny of their social media provider. It's just that instead of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, it's whatever random person runs the server that they randomly picked to put their account on.