I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.

[jonchevreau@mstdn.ca]

@davew @benroyce Sarcasm Alert!

[lillyherself@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz @User47 I'm not sure I want the typical Blue sky user here on masto, do you? Bluesky is full of pompous blowhards using it as push media. They don't want engagement, they just want to broadcast self promotion.

[kotaro@kotaro.me]

@taylorlorenz When you're tired of X, come over here.

[ca@ieji.de]

@taylorlorenz Amusement parks are great, but you're just a visitor passing through. A public park is where you can meet your neighbours and the community decides if they want to add a café.

[ck0@tech.lgbt]

@taylorlorenz I've actually though of how to describe Mastodon in a short way to non techi-people, while keeping in mind what prevented me to join any federated network before.

The whole point of Mastodon is to put back controls of their social networks to the users. That means it's not design around advertisements and unknown way to select content for you. Instead people run servers around given thematics. There is no need to have algorithms which choose for you content you might be interrested for, instead you find a server which have a community around the same interrests or localisation, and your local timeline will be filled of content from people of the same server, which have the same interrests.
But as it's federated, nothing prevent you to read content from other users. Because an account creation is easy, you can also have alt-accounts to discover other communities, and follow people from there on you main account. Most of the Mastodon apps can manage multiple accounts.

[gemlog@tilde.zone]

@mike @taylorlorenz
No adverts, no algorithms and you choose exactly what you see and read and who you talk to.

[mkj@social.mkj.earth]

There are a lot of technical advantages (and some disadvantages), but for a single point about free expression:

There is no singular entity that decides what is acceptable to say, what gets promoted, what gets demoted ("shadow banning"), or causes your account to be deleted.

(Sure, there's a lot of abhorrent stuff you can post that will likely get your account or instance widely shunned, blocked and/or defederated. But it's not the decision of any *one* individual or company.)

@taylorlorenz

[punissuer@universeodon.com]

@tommertron @timbray @taylorlorenz @JonChevreau except apparently email is an oligopoly now; you can't run your own server anymore.
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

[sunnythesheep@mastodon.social]

@haubles @taylorlorenz and even a friend's "TikTok"

[t_var_s@phpc.social]

@taylorlorenz @mudaste Say something like "I'm happy to answer this question repeatedly for multiple news channels as I'm sure we all appreciate having a common but diverse environment where many points of view can come from different sources..."

[alex@higher-edu.social]

@haubles @taylorlorenz dear madam, thx for the info. Just wanted 2 inform: I can not open a insta account anymore. Most probably because I commented my former boss' insta pictures (she was or is also model). I swear it wcharming only(after me being below her in companie's hierarchy. But I can not ask insta (META) what the (/$/&§§"!$§"/%$) is going on there. Wt i want to tell is that META can not be reached en by german federal offices...just 2 let u know cheers Jan CT BECKMANN Diploma eng.

[patatapinecone@theforkiverse.com]

@taylorlorenz I'm somewhat new, this far what I notice is: the vibes are not off. On other social networks I feel like a consumer. I scroll. I'm even afraid to post at all. There is a lightness to the place.

[coolcalmcollected@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz I just made a mastodon account 6 days ago. I have way more options for how my account looks with skins and multicolumn layout right in settings (instead of a third party app), drill just got suspended and the response from the frazee was basically "oh, did I do that?". i'm not a fan of snotty little shits banning people for nebulous posts.

[unusnemo@friendica.rogueproject.org]

@taylorlorenz

I do not use Mastodon and if it was the only option, I would not be on the Fediverse at all. Thankfully it is not the only option.

As far as what I would say about the Fediverse's distributed nature. I would point out the benefits of not having one person, the owner of the centralized social media, make all the decisions. They might even force you to only have one type of Instance .

There is a large range of benefits though the top is that no one person will ever control the Fediverse. It was designed to prevent that from being a reality. If a person wants to have someone else make all their decisions for them, then I guess centralized social media is for them. It is definitely not for me. I love the extended control over formatting and style we have. I love the way we can decide what gets propagated (by interacting with it) rather than having that central authority make the decision of what we should see propagated.

[haubles@hachyderm.io]

@aesthr @taylorlorenz

I take your point, but as you say: that’s a people problem not a technology problem. that is true of people wherever they form groups, on and offline. The fediverse is different because unlike other social networking platforms, you can vote with your feet if you find yourself in a social space that doesn’t suit you anymore, by leaving and taking your followers and followings with you.

There’s certainly more we can do as a community (and as the Mastodon org) to make our technology more resilient to toxic human dynamics. One thing is we want to do is make it a lot easier for anyone to host a Mastodon instance, so if you can’t find a space that suits you, you can make your own. And we’re working on that this year! Another thing we’re considering (but is not on our roadmap right now) is adding post migration, which will make it a lot easier for people to pick up and leave when a space doesn’t suit them anymore.

We’re not trying to “fix” people here, but we are trying to make technology that is resilient to our worst habits and impulses instead of actively exploiting and compounding them. How do you think we should try to address this?

[haubles@hachyderm.io]

@davep @taylorlorenz

*ALL-FATHERS LET THE CLOUT FLOW THOUGH ME ONE LAST TIME*

[stragu@mastodon.indie.host]

@taylorlorenz
My take on it would be:

- no ads
- culture overall against AI slop
- no black-box algorithm
- you create a profile where the rules suit you, while still being connected to the rest of the network
- ... which means it somewhat reflects better how diverse we are. Not "one size fits all" behemoth.
- you can move if things change
- not designed to be adictive, milk your data and drain your wallet

[aesthr@wandering.shop]

@haubles it's true that you can move instances when you want, but that's also a very clunky process that puts a lot of people off. and then there's the whole anxiety over losing connections because of how instances are or aren't federating with each other. So I don't think "you can just move" is as simple as people often claim it is.

And it's not just an issue of having to move instances. The relationship people have with their admins can also be a very unhealthy parasocial one.

[aesthr@wandering.shop]

@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.

[haubles@hachyderm.io]

@aesthr these are good points, and thank you for your feedback! As I said, we definitely want to make account migration and instance hosting better and more accessible. Stay tuned