David Barratt on Twitter (Twitter)so everyone pays for their own website (domain, hosting, support, etc.)?
— David Barratt (@davidwbarratt) March 23, 2019
Sure why not? Don’t you imagine that if multiple millions left Facebook for managed hosting that the cost of $5/month would potentially drop to $1/month or less via competition?
While Federation may be a useful possible solution, keep in mind the potential pitfalls of what the average public may be doing. Swapping a major corporation with known motivations for an unknown Mastodon instance (for example) may just be trading for a different set of problems. Choosing a particular instance can not only be difficult, but finding one that will have some longevity and treat its users’ data respectfully can be spotty. As an example, at the end of February the Mashable article “Mastodon has an instance for Everyone” (from 2017-04-15) only 3 of the 9 Mastodon instances it links to are still up or actually still Mastodon (others are spam, random WordPress, or NSFW squatters).
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We need a plurality of potential solutions built on basic web standards so various pieces can inter-operate without being siloed away.
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It’s not perfect yet, but my personal WordPress site can support ActivityPub and be part of the fediverse and accept replies to posts already. (Try @chrisaldrich.) I can also publish on my own site, syndicate to Twitter, and get replies back using the Webmention protocol. I can interact with Drupal, Known, Craft CMS, and other sites that support Webmention.
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It may take a while, but things are improving with the work of lots of individuals in the IndieWeb, the W3C social working groups, the fediverse, etc.
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so something like this billion dollar company? automattic.com
It could be potentially (with a few changes) as one of many others including any other web host or managed hosting company. Ideally, anyone who has a domain name and a web presence would make the open web more like a public utility. One size fits all shouldn’t be part of the equation. People should have choice. If you’re not happy with what Facebook, Twitter, or even WordPress.com is doing or how easily (or not) it works you should be able to take your data and your domain and use any another service, CMS, or online platform.
Currently my favorite contender for the less technically adept would be micro.blog which supports a huge range of open standards and protocols and actively encourages people to own their domain and own their content.
I’ll note for your specific benefit that Drupal has made some dramatic strides in these areas with @swentel’s phenomenal dedication and work as well as some of what @Dries has written about over the past year.
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