An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
If a server defederates, users can stay or go. Maybe the users of that server decide that there’s enough content locally sand they prefer to use what is a private forum. And if they don’t, they migrate.
I think rather than a possible disaster, this is an example of the principle that we should build the web not with the intention that systems never break, but that they break better. Like letting small, healthy brush fires maintain forests instead of trying to prevent them until they explode catastrophically.