Aaron Parecki

nothing like a badge that just says “I paid $8 for this badge”

And that has it's own difficulties: it's not as universal, it's not as one-stop, you have to go find your own place instead of going to The One Place Where Everything Is. But for most of human history that's how it's worked, and centralizing it hasn't actually gone great!

So what happens if everyone can't go to Mastodon? Or to cohost? Or to whatever? What happens is a fractionalization, a balkanization, where instead of 1 big cohort you get a dozen or a hundred or a thousand smaller ones. Which: scales better. Which: is more healthy.

on the one hand, ux is good yes ok. but also path of absolute least resistance is how the web condensed into three fucking websites. you think it's too complicated that you have to pick the equivalent of an email provider? you would've starved in the jungle of the 90s internet