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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@thedansimonson @taylorlorenz I'm betting that with a 44 billion buy in Elon could do whatever he wanted to fedi, flood anything server with so much traffic, takedown requests, legal threats, etc., to make running an instance unviable.
Like with most things, I think the audience that fedi has attracted, who tend to filter out other audiences, matters more than the tech it's built on.
It's the same with Nostr. Nostr isn't uniquely a Bitcoin thing, but it's filled with all the Bitcoin people cause that's what they went with.@parker @taylorlorenz you’re still talking about trying to capture hundreds of independent servers, which would only grow as efforts to take out the bigger servers started
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@cholling @taylorlorenz There are other ways... like redirecting before serving the page.
@philpetree @taylorlorenz How does that stop crawlers (and not other traffic)?
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@haubles I think this is very much a problem caused by the low level design of the fediverse. The way instances work in ActivityPub leads to a few people in powerful positions and that's very much an effect of the technology, not a purely social one.
@aesthr @haubles I see instance/account as analogous to a landlord/tenant relationship. The single-user instances, I suppose are the homeowners. Self hosting costs money. It's small money, but it's money. I think the emerging wireless mesh networks have the right network topology but unfortunately have various proprietary softwares and firmwares in the stack, but it seems exciting, possibly more exciting than the fediverse. -
@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...
@WolvericCatkin @weezmgk I crashed just after I found out my instance was shutting down, and by the time I was well enough to come back it was gone and I couldn't migrate anything. Thanks, #LongCovid.
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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.
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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
Twitter was like being stuck on a cable news panel of people shouting at each other. Every interaction was fraught and involved people obsessed with correcting or reinforcing each other's opinions.
Mastodon is like a coffee break at a conference. Like walking through a constant stream of interesting conversations that I can drift in and out of without fuss or pressure.
I don't have to surf an emotional high as I scroll. People here read posts all the way through and engage intellectually and emotionally instead of only emotionally.
And I curate my timeline, so I can manage how much emotional exhaustion I'm willing to incur and I mostly don't get random crap that infuriates me or is designed to upset me.
There are still microbloggers, and there are moderation problems, but Mastodon doesn't track "influence" so I don't get many influencers in my feed.
It's restful.
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Sorry, shitty hosting, I'll get one from YouTube(!)
But only that's because I'm too sloppy to find other fediverse posts...... Thanks for the feedback though, C44 peertube is running on a bottom tier VPS, it's an experiment
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It's like, imagine if a single company owned all the TV stations and news outlets?
The Fediverse, and Mastodon in particular, showcases what social media can be when designed for democratic dialogue rather than profit.
It’s open source, so its rules and algorithms are transparent and accountable.
No single company owns it, so no billionaire can unilaterally shape speech.
It’s also interoperable, meaning people can move freely instead of being trapped in walled gardens.
Because it doesn't depend on outrage for ad revenue, it fosters healthier, more civil conversations.
#LeaveX -
@_elena @Tamtam @n_dimension @taylorlorenz C44 appears to be #ytdlp compatible and therefore works for me. It's on my playlist for tonite.
@lori @_elena @n_dimension @taylorlorenz can you make your post accesible for non tech -me?
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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
The network is built so it can't be controlled by one single entity.
Therefore this entity cannot impose a unique censorship to everyone. -
@philpetree @taylorlorenz How does that stop crawlers (and not other traffic)?
@cholling @taylorlorenz User Agent Strings which id crawlers such as GPTBot.
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@cholling @taylorlorenz User Agent Strings which id crawlers such as GPTBot.
@philpetree @taylorlorenz And can never be faked?
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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'm no expert but I think the main advantage is that the fediverse is not designed to milk its users for profit.
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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 “Imagine if all the world’s email, for individuals, companies and governments, was all controlled by just one company; even if the owner of that company wasn’t insane, would that be a good idea? What could go wrong?
And if things did go wrong, would everyone moving to alternative email services run by just a few other big companies, whose systems didn’t talk to each other, solve those problems? Or create new problems?”
Is what we have for email now better? Why?”
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@philpetree @taylorlorenz And can never be faked?
@cholling @taylorlorenz and no problem can ever be solved and no solution is ever complete... Dude, your schtick is as old as time. Find another target.
