@mitchconner @Tony @10grans @grizzlywhisker @bot I remember when Diaspora "went viral" (as people said back then) and people crowdfunded a ridiculous amount of money for it before everyone realized that it was just a few undergrads who had no actual clue how to write secure, federated web services.

They wrote a Ruby on Rails app that was largely a flop, but the strong desire for many to move away from mask-off Facebook was still there, leading to things like GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.