I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
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@taylorlorenz as a platform it is not and can never be adversarial or extractive to you as a user, the way twitter, Facebook, instagram, TikTok and others are or will be.
@taylorlorenz @ben the other thing that struck me ages ago was that if I got notifications on Twitter I'd get a bit of an anxiety spike as the network got progressively more toxic.
Here, it's 99% pleasant and when it's not, it's still not stressful, just a case of folks getting a little too earnestly pedantic and even those edge cases are weirdly endearing.
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I'd describe it as tradeoffs.
Would we use email the way we do if only Gmail people could email Gmail people? I think it wouldn't.
So email is better (not without issues like spam) because anybody can email anybody.
Mastodon/Fediverse provides similar benefits (and some problems) that "federated email" provide compared to siloed email.
I would argue the benefits outweigh the negatives.
@taylorlorenz @bigolewannabe and given the weird ways Google has been presumably trying to fight spam, it's in some ways breaking email.
I try to email folks from my third party email service and Gmail will periodically block my legitimate messages if I cc too many Gmail people, so I have to use a mass email product instead to reach them which.... Hurts my head.
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@futurebird @taylorlorenz
"federated network" has some nice flavors (currently the word "federal" notwithstanding), and sets folks up for this fine fediverse of ours.@futurebird @livcomp I mean the world is bigger than the US. Federal or Confederation, to think in Canadian, is considered a good thing elsewhere
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It's like, imagine if a single company owned all the TV stations and news outlets?
@alessandro
You mean kinda like Bezos owns Amazon (with Amazon Prime Video) and the Washington Post?
@taylorlorenz -
I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
I tend to argue with the infamous Enshittification cycle:
Commercial platforms are initially good for users until they capture the market. Then they make things worse for users in order to sell them out to other commercial interests. Then they make things worse for their business partners too in order to make more money.
Decentralized, non-commercial media avoid this trap:
They have no financial motive to make the user experience worse.
And if a specific instance does get worse, their users can move elsewhere and take their social media connections with them.
Thus, decentralized, non-commercial social media can actually get _better_ over time, while commercial "walled gardens" will only get worse over time.
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@futurebird
> so I didn't miss posts from people who don't post frequentlyYou can set notifications for profiles by activating the bell.
It would be neat to customize that more to incial post's, not necessarily answers (or rehares).
And a timeline only for original toots, not reshares of profiles would be fine.
(anyway, that are mastodon specific details, from over here that's different all together)@futurebird @diraquel @utopiarte notifications from my closest friends are my solution too
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@taylorlorenz No one can ever own it or sell it.
@catnip @taylorlorenz Interconnectivity, the way the internet was meant to be. No matter which provider, client, or technology you're using, you still can connect an communicate with everyone.
Corporations want to achieve that through monopolies, whilst the fediverse (of which Mastodon is part of) does so by using common and non-proprietary standards.
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@taylorlorenz I really struggled to boil this down in a quote toot but I'll try for a simpler answer here: it's ELON proof
and custom emojis
@dannotdaniel @taylorlorenz my version is that it can't be bought by billionaires, and if a billionaire sweeps in and buys a large server we just fediblock that server.
See also Bluesky.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz i would personally focus on how fedi, by its nature, is moderated by real people with a real stake in their community. i think much of why this platform is better than corporate platforms is moderation via social contract
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@futurebird @livcomp I mean the world is bigger than the US. Federal or Confederation, to think in Canadian, is considered a good thing elsewhere
@krupo @futurebird for sure it is, and the USA is also kinda deflating these days.. i think all roads should lead to 'fediverse' as the place we are and the place to be.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz Tbh, the most challenging benefit to highlight, is how much abusive content your admins are probably protecting you from...
The one experience of harassment I have had since I started using Mastodon was also pretty cool, as after I reported the account, their instance administrators almost immediately handled it, by deleting their account... 
Maybe they'd just been going under the radar, but I guess they didn't like their extensive history of that sort of behaviour... -
@taylorlorenz If you research washing machines online, Mastodon won’t start trying to sell you one.
@ScottGrimmett @taylorlorenz I have one to sell.
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@wiredfire falling down @cmconseils 's meme tunnel was not what I expected to do this evening but I got some great laughs and it reminded me of another thing few people have mentioned to @taylorlorenz - the extensive and enthusiastic use of #alttext to not only make this place more inclusive for those who need it but to make content easier to understand (and in the case of jokes flying over peoples' heads... Also because they need it).
@wiredfire @taylorlorenz @krupo meme tunnel
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@krupo @futurebird for sure it is, and the USA is also kinda deflating these days.. i think all roads should lead to 'fediverse' as the place we are and the place to be.
@futurebird @livcomp my long term project is to move some volunteering work to this platform and this mega thread has been a useful well of ideas on how to justify the move to the rest of my team.
The almost resolved question that has been my main personal stumbling block has been deciding on which instance to select.
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Mastodon is the anti-influence platform
On the social web we are
- free from the influence of megalomaniacs or any one person
- free from the influence of VCs and profit motivations
- free from the influence of algorithmic manipulationPlus as a bonus, you can follow a friend's "Instagram" from your "Twitter" account
@haubles @taylorlorenz that first one really isn’t true though. The fediverse has harmful parasocial and group dynamics just like every other social space. And the concentration of power in instance admins sure adds to that.
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@NMBA can you do that now? I have moved servers twice, each time, my followers disappeared. Although, I haven't had to do that terribly recently. YMMV. 🫲
🫱 @taylorlorenz@weezmgk Did you go into the settings of your existing account, and point it to your new account?
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@weezmgk Did you go into the settings of your existing account, and point it to your new account?
@WolvericCatkin probably not since I don't know how to do that
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@taylorlorenz Nothing new really--just that we make the algorithm with boosting often and following widely. The effort I spend in getting into streams of content is worth the satisfaction of enriching multiple aspects of my life. Knowing that a billionaire cannot ensh*ttify this is also a big plus because the present-day game plan seems to be billionaire + media outlet = ashes.
@DataAngler @taylorlorenz well they’re applying what the Nazis learned 100 years ago. You have to control the means of communication which enables you to control the message.
We have a coterie of billionaires who control the printed press and most of the media, but mastodon is outwith their purvey so we can do what we like! -
@WolvericCatkin probably not since I don't know how to do that
@weezmgk Yeah, it's been a core part of the platform as long as I've been a user (since 2022...?), but it's a process you need to actively initiate. I don't remember where it is exactly, but if you open the web app, there should be a section in your account settings, to initiate a migration and deactivate your existing account...
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@weezmgk Yeah, it's been a core part of the platform as long as I've been a user (since 2022...?), but it's a process you need to actively initiate. I don't remember where it is exactly, but if you open the web app, there should be a section in your account settings, to initiate a migration and deactivate your existing account...
