I mean, the basic answer to that question is because server storage costs something and the people offering these services/websites either don’t want to make a loss or straight up want to make a profit.

PDF editing truly sucks, 100% agree with you on that

deleted by creator

Well yeah, Spotify was invented in Sweden, home of Pirate Bay and the Pirate Party. To cite one article about the service: “Developed to bridge the gap between illegal file sharing innovation and a behind-the-times record industry, Spotify is conducting a delicate balancing act.”

IT sector probably is a lot different in hiring practices than some typical management jobs

That probably depends more on what is before the @. Is your mailadress a gamertag or some random thing you came up with as a teen? “Superbunny69” probably has a lower chance of success than “lastn.firstname”

Tbh I’m parroting what others have told me, I’ not sure which clients do that

A lot of clients filter out the 2nd, 3rd… instance of crossposted posts in their main feeds, so only the first one gets shown. Therefore if I crosspost I do it the following way:

1. First post it in a small community. All people who are subscribed to this community will see the post in this community.

2. Then crosspost to a bigger community. Everyone not subscribed to the first small community will see the post in here.

Fediverse Report writes in today’s edition that the NodeBB, WordPress ActivityPub plugin, WriteFreely and Ghost developers “recognise themselves as the ‘longform’ people.”

I think it no longer exists

That is not the case anymore, that setting has been removed some versions ago

No, anyone is able to create a “feed”

Problem being that any instance only displays those posts under a hashtag that it knows about. Currently, if I follow #formula1 from my home instance, I’m seeing different posts than if I follow #formula1 from a certain other instance.

Will probably get better with developments in that aspect in the next few years.

Surph_ninja is definitely right with one thing though: previously Meta used a pre-selected group of organizers who were able to fact check. Meta are now switching to a model where everyone can “fact check” (the former Twitter “community notes” system).

I take it that you missed the whole WordPress situation that developed over the last couple of months?

It’s about control over the intellectual property (trademarks, copyright) as well as control over the company which pays the developers. One does definitely not want a single person in control of these things, otherwise they can hold the whole project hostage (like Mullenweg is accused of, in the case of WordPress).

Additionally, the change also gives them a preferable tax status than the previous arrangement.

The point isnt money. The point is the “benevolent dictator” model, see Matt Mullenweg and the current WordPress controversy. The whole future of that software depends on this guy because he controls the most important assets (like the trademarks) personally.

Eugen and the whole Mastodon development team want to avoid a situation like that.

Bluesky has had a very fast development cycle and now already has features it didnt have 6 months ago. Mastodon’s main problem IMO is how long it takes for features to make their way into the live version. There are features on their github ready to be merged in for 2 years and when asked, no one on the development team was able to find out why it had not been merged.

Bluesky literally allows people to finetune controls on things like allowing quote posts and replies. Thats way more freedom that the average social media platform gives to a user.

Bluesky has the USP of people being able to choose from multiple algorithms or even use multiple ones at the same time; and that certainly has resonated with a lot of people.

The Mastodon devs have received a grant to work on a search/visibility tool in 2025, so I definitely expect developments there

For short videos, Loops seems like an idea? Unfortunately there is no embedding of loops in other fediverse software yet, but I’d predict that it will come in the future