I suggest that only some servers are paid. Others can be run by yourself or your friends. And they can federate. It definitely works with email, even though a large part of the network is from Google. All we need is a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).

That is true, I’ve looked at Twitter and went “how is something so basic in functionality not an open standard?”.

Although it’s not always as intuitive as email. IRC could’ve extended into something like Discord had it not been so programmer centric.

Either way, these people have us by the balls over already established syndication capabilities like RSS, just weighted in their direction(s).

> I’ve looked at Twitter and went “how is something so basic in functionality not an open standard?”.

Mastodon (Activity Pub) is basically the open standard you are looking for here.

I know, and I've seen it. A lot of the major publishers like CNN are loosely mirrored and far less consistent.

With enough man power, you can recreate anything, but without a strong userbase, well...

And don't even get me started on a name like "Mastodon", lol.

> a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).

You might be thinking of the GDPR's Right to Data Portability[0] which includes "the right to transmit those data to another controller ... by automated means".

This should require Facebook to synch the posts you make on their website to another account you hold on a Fediverse node, but unfortunately it doesn't require Facebook to synch content that you can see (but didn't produce) from their website to that node.

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

Thank you, I stand corrected. Still, a good step in the right direction.