In all the discussion about centralisation, such as the furore over 3 Waters, one question never seems to get asked. Why are small organisations struggling to get credit, even for essential public interest work, such that amalgamation into mega-entities is seen as the only financially viable solution?
Is #Mastodon really viable for the small to medium-sized operator?
We assert, "NO!"
We did something simple. With a Mastodon tab open we hit Ctrl+Shift+E to get the Network Tab. With an inactive thread open in Mastodon, we went to another website to read an article.
An hour passes and what we discovered shocked us. Mastodon somehow justified sending us 55MB of data. The #NetworkTab said 55MB over 1500 requests (53MB transferred).
It's also socially irresponsible as smaller operators struggle to cope with M'don's demands. Our instance for example is being forced to shutdown due to being unable to handle the $40/month cost.
It means more #centralisation. We're back at square one, because most users tolerated M'don bringing anti-features to #Fediverse.
Looks like we don't need laws after all for platforms to opportunistically suppress political user content: In 🇫🇷 #France, a #Snapchat#lobbyist admitted in a parliamentary hearing that the company was "proud" to have collaborated "hand in hand with the interior ministry" to make sure only user content critical of the mass protests was shown on #SnapMaps.