Update on Mask Networks

Surprising me after I had wrapped recording interviews for next week’s episode Suji responded to my request for comments.

Suji offered some clarifications to our story:

Suji Yan: “One very important thing is Pawoo is founded by Pixiv. Which pixiv is sub co. of Japanese publication giant Animate.”

Suji Yan: “Also please note that I was not raised in China. I was born in Shanghai.”

To answer some questions…

Across The Fediverse: Can I ask you on the record, Pawoo has a reputation for, content that let’s just say would not be legal to host in some jurisdictions, does Mask Networks have any plans to “clean up” Pawoo so to speak?

Suji Yan: “The current plan is to keep it as it until the transition, upgrade are fully done. May discuss after that but have to have discussions and feedbacks from pawoo/pixiv user first.”

Across The Fediverse: During my research on the purchase of Pawoo I came into contact with members of another organisation, http://Social.Coop who also run a mastodon instance, and according to their public posts have asked that The Social Coop Limited consider changing their name to avoid confusion; are you aware of this naming conflict and is there any plans to resolve or remedy it in any way?

Suji Yan: “The Social Coop Ltd is merely a placeholder entity to facilitate the transition etc, Which the name have no connection with the instance and it’s just coincidence. I know prof Nathan of Social.coop personally though.”

Across The Fediverse: It is certainly an interesting time to be purchasing social networks too; especially when it comes to someone so closely tied to crypto - with the markets still slow to recover and the value of mainstream social networks like Twitter and Facebook are diminishing both for investors and advertisers;
Why expand now?

Suji Yan: “On why question - this might be need a super long answer.. but short version is Russell [pawoo owners prior to the deal] contact us. I can’t disclose the deal until it’s full closed.”

Across The Fediverse: Would have the purchase of Pawoo occured without the recent mass migrations to Mastodon, or was aquiring a larger slice of the fediverse user base an existing plan?

Suji Yan: “If pixiv willing to keep pouring money we’d love to see pawoo run in it own experiments. Which pixiv stopped both pawoo and pawoo music (think sound cloud on fedi) in 2019. Russell is not financially able to support pawoo without a giant group company back them. So they contact us … The longer version of ‘why’ maybe deserve an interview or dedicate article if you’re interested. We can discuss later after new year.”

We of course accepted Suji’s offer of an interview in the new year and we hope to discuss some of these topics and many more in an extended recorded interview coming to you in a future episode.