I super appreciate you taking the time to check us out and read through everything, along with your opinions! 
I agree with you that one of the (many) challenges here is the considerable friction. Hopefully, it’s clear that I don’t profess to have any of this “figured out”, but I am actively and continually working on it.
Some of the hardest things I’ve encountered so far that seem to be very big friction points:
- “in-your-face” payment
- existing networks obfuscate their costs
- I’ve struck, I think, a solid balance in a 1-time relatively inexpensive payment (with options in the US to spread those payments out) — no subscriptions
- network effects
- people want to be where their people already are
- the platforms people are currently on are designed to be able to control you and your future behavior (regardless of whether they’re successful or not), in theory I could see how this could present a possible barrier
- educating and selling
- most people I’ve encountered don’t think about these issues/topics and are unaware of the reasons why I would be motivated to make something like MOSSLET
- marketing becomes a balancing act between getting the product out there and educating as to why it matters (without getting lost in the technical weeds — Shoshana Zuboff is my go-to favorite reference, she explains things so well, but her book is quite a book and a lot of people don’t feel like they have the time)
- market availability and performance/feature set
- we simply lack the robust amount of features that you might find on an entrenched platform
- running on minimal hardware for cost (effects the speed/performance of our service vs others)
- we currently don’t have apps in the stores so that limits our availability to a lot of people
On a positive note, most people I talk to immediately think MOSSLET is awesome. Now whether they’re just being polite to me or not, I don’t know, but I do think that it’s a pretty common feeling to want to be able to preserve your privacy and dignity online. So, again, I am finding that the network effects is a big friction point alongside the feeling of “isolation” of a small network like MOSSLET.
To your Twitter/Bsky point, I’m actually currently planning on implementing functionality to support the AT Protocol in conjunction with opening our platform to support more public-facing interactions. My thinking is that when I implement this it’ll enable people to share their profiles publicly (and any public posts), and then they’ll be able to optionally sync that with their AT Protocol accounts (so they can either create new ones, sync a new AT protocol account with their MOSSLET account data, or simply manage their two separate accounts — MOSSLET and AT Protocol, bsky mainly) from within their MOSSLET account. This would be optional so people who want to simply use MOSSLET can keep doing so without opening up any federated accounts/data exchanges.
Then, the second stage of this iteration would be to provide the ability to full-on create/host their own domains as well. The thinking here is to give people another option so they can have the privacy of their MOSSLET account and the continuation of these other more public services (and easily take their data with them if they want to leave MOSSLET). This would also be an option to expand to support the ActivityPub protocol as well for services like Mastodon. This is not set in stone, but it is what I’m actively considering/planning.
I would push back a bit on the idea that there is a political viewpoint specific to MOSSLET (unless I misunderstood that part of your message), though I could see how it may be perceived that way. To me, anyone who gets a MOSSLET account is essentially saying that they don’t want their data used against them. I think that’s more of a personal idea rather than political, though I get that it can easily be a political one.
There’s also the aspect that social networks essentially become political if/once the messaging can be made public, when news/media organizations start to quote them for example, and then all the accompanying challenges that that brings with it. I think there’s so much to discuss around these ideas, but for me it starts with moving off of platforms that are designed to addict, manipulate, and control anyone who goes onto them (in terms of economics, the algorithms favor disinformation which I last read to be valued at $1.1 billion) — and so for me my way of feeling like I might be contributing positively to that is to make an alternative that tries to protect against that.
Then, another challenge, is simply the engineering/coding aspect and that it’s currently just me for better or worse 
Thank you again, I’m really hopeful that bringing in support to have your MOSSLET account and/or your federated accounts will help alleviate another friction point to making the switch — along with general improvements to ui/ux and making things easier.
This is what has most recently been updated:
Granular privacy controls - Share with specific groups, individuals, or publicly. Your choice, every time.
Community safety tools - Mute, block, and report people/content that violates your boundaries or our terms.
And currently working on:
Privacy-first presence system (launching soon) - Control who sees when you’re online using double-encryption that even we can’t access. Default: completely private.
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As I reread your last section again, I think I’m understanding more that the marketing of MOSSLET is another friction point, that its perhaps making it feel like joining MOSSLET is doing something political rather than personal (I’m reminded now of the little “join the privacy revolution” copy on the register page). Am I understanding that?
Thank you again for your time and feedback, it goes into everything I think about
SSRF Prevention: Blocks private IPs, localhost, link-local addresses; validates schemes/ports
~15 min demo
- Watch Video
