A Mammoth Task, is the headline of the interview by German newspaper Zeit with Eugen Rochko. It details the history and background of how Eugen Rochko came to build Mastodon, and his vision for social networks. It introduces him as a private person, who rarely gives interviews, does not go to conferences, and has not met most of Mastodon’s employees in person (a shame, as I very much enjoyed meeting Mastodon CTO Renaud Chaput at Next Generation Internet conference last week)
The article does not shy away from pointing out some uncomfortable facts either, noting his title as a Benevolent Dictator For Life. They write: ‘“I feel quite comfortable in this role,” he [Eugen Rochko] says, “an individual with a vision always builds a better product than a group.” He almost sounds like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of this world. Is Rochko really interested in building a democratic network? Or does he just want to be at the top himself?’.
The entire interview is worth reading (non-paywalled here, auto translation works well enough), as it shows that some press is moving beyond an easy narrative of Mastodon as an replacement for Twitter, and is willing to look deeper into how decisions get made on this new generation of decentralised social networks.
One Response
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