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+++ inReplyTo = "https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service" original = "https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service#comment-5c823ae54e17b6230bbb5137" date = 2019-03-08T09:50:29Z title = "in response to "Status as a Service (StaaS)" from Eugene Wei" tags = ["capitalism", "social", "capital", "mastodon", "utility", "analysis"] indieweb_type = "reply" +++
Hmm. I must preface this comment by saying that I read this article as a Mastodon user, due to your brief mention of Mastodon within the article. But after having read the article, I would in particular make the distinction that there is less of a focus on copying the status game, and more of a focus on utility. Which is to say, I have made the observation that most people coming to Mastodon seeking an alternative to Twitter have generally followed one of two patterns:
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They find that the status game on Mastodon is lacking, or rather, intentionally de-emphasized by comparison, and so they go back to Twitter where they can proclaim to their followers that Mastodon sucks.
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They came to Mastodon seeking utility and an escape from the pervasive status game of Twitter, and thus they come to appreciate the fact that there are no ads, that timelines are chronological, that actual human moderators exist to deal with trolls and abusers, etc.
Which isn't to say that Mastodon is in itself immune to social capital, but rather, that an emphasis on utility is to be expected or even necessary, if a network is to survive. Of course, there's the advantage that Mastodon's network is actually a network of networks similar to email, and so Mastodon's success or failure is instead bound to how well it allows its users to access that existing network.
For a network that, for the past decade, has largely been against capital itself (including social capital), perhaps the main takeaway is that we should be building sustainable utility-driven solutions in order to counteract the necessity of relying on social capital.