Replace "Join mastodon.social" button on front page with button promoting rotating third party server from pool of reliable servers

[FediVideos]

At the moment the front page of JoinMastodon is implying that people who want to join Mastodon should join mastodon.social. This is causing the Fediverse to centralise, as the percentage of active Fedi users on mastodon.social has climbed to almost 30% (it used to be about 10-15%). If you look at just Mastodon servers the percentage is even higher.

It is conceivable that mastodon.social could soon reach 50%, and at that point the Fediverse would be centralised as most of it would be under direct control of Mastodon gGmbH. This is exactly the scenario that Mastodon was supposed to be created to avoid, if you watch the 2018 official Mastodon promo it specifically mentions as its selling point that no one person or company controls it (https://fedi.video/w/cbQE3NRw76FayQCSdb14TU).

I realise recommending one server makes things easier for people who find servers confusing, but it seems a very unwise idea to recommend the supergiant server (for example mastodon.social is twenty-four times larger than mas.to, and mas.to is considered a large server). Instead, the front page of the website could recommend a rotating server from a pool of reliable servers with good track records going back many years.

A centralised Mastodon would be like a closed source Linux, totally pointless. Mastodon gGmbH needs to start spreading the growth like it used to if it is to keep its reason for existing.

[ratcatcher]

A possible way to approach this would be for the gGmbH to:

1. Close new signups for mastodon.social.
2. Create a new instance for new signups.
3. Repeat this process once the new instance has reached optimum size (whatever that is determined to be).

The advantage of this modus operandi is that moderators could ensure the smooth running of the "mature" instances whilst issues around spamming, bots and bad actors would be largely confined to the new (growing, but smaller) instance allowing new signups.

Eventually, if desired, the "mature" instances could be handed over to separate mod teams, spreading the workload further.

[FediVideos]

It would be problematic if the same company would control them all though? The idea of spreading the growth is that no single company controls the Fediverse.

It might work if they could hand over the instance to someone totally different unconnected with the company before replacing it?

[ratcatcher]

I see that as a longer term thing. The gGmbH could run the instances initially but progressively hand over control of the older ones to trusted groups or organisations.

[FediVideos]

This problem has been happening since 2023, surely it is past initial phase now?

[morebento]

Please also ensure they are geographically distributed especially southern hemisphere.

[ravimakhijapi]

Given that mastodon is open-source, can this not be set in the source code perhaps and therefore be a pull request? Is this aspect currently being pulled from a database?