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

[tokensane@mastodon.me.uk]

@taylorlorenz For me, "not owned by billionaires" is the key. I can use social media without an algorithm designed by a billionaire chum of Epstein shoving *his* favoured opinions into my feed, or shadowbanning me or closing my account for saying something that *he* disagrees with.

[parker@dsmc.space]

@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.

[bumblefudge@activitypub.space]

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social fancy meeting you here! big fan, read the book and everything.

this isn't at all what you asked for, but i wrote an essay once that might be useful in more of a bigpicture/media-industry context.

you might also find to check out (or interview) elena, who is kind of our resident fedifluencer

[thedansimonson@lingo.lol]

@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

[cholling@bytes.programming.dev]

@philpetree @taylorlorenz How does that stop crawlers (and not other traffic)?

[Guest]

@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.

[Guest]

@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.

[Guest]

@benroyce @davew And the most alt-text-encouraging culture in cyberspace.

[Guest]

@taylorlorenz @ben Certainly non-adversarial data export was a distant memory before I found the fediverse.

[Guest]

@taylorlorenz

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.

[Guest]

@_elena @Tamtam @n_dimension @taylorlorenz C44 appears to be #ytdlp compatible and therefore works for me. It's on my playlist for tonite.

[leavex@mastodon.social]

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

[tamtam@mastodon.de]

@lori @_elena @n_dimension @taylorlorenz can you make your post accesible for non tech -me?

[Guest]

@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@mastodon.social]

@cholling @taylorlorenz User Agent Strings which id crawlers such as GPTBot.

[cholling@bytes.programming.dev]

@philpetree @taylorlorenz And can never be faked?

[Guest]

@taylorlorenz I'm no expert but I think the main advantage is that the fediverse is not designed to milk its users for profit.

[Guest]

@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?”

[philpetree@mastodon.social]

@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.