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

Alessandro Corazza 🇨🇦

It's like, imagine if a single company owned all the TV stations and news outlets?

FediThing :progress_pride:

I've tried to go over the benefits in really simple non-techy bullet point terms in this article: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers

Taylor Lorenz

@taylorlorenz
No oligarch control
No ads
Public funded

Lesley Shashaty

@taylorlorenz No algorithm, no advertising. Completely customizable content.

RowinSpeez

@taylorlorenz there's no algorithm, so you get to see what your friends post without having your attention attacked. They don't arbitrarily change the platform to boost engagement time. There's no ads.

Alex Strasheim

@taylorlorenz No single person can break Mastodon, the way Elon was able to break Twitter. No change can be made by fiat, everything requires community buy in.

wokester

@taylorlorenz no one can buy the whole network and trash it

Henrik B. Andersen

@taylorlorenz you control your own timeline with no ads and no algorithm

Eric de Redelijkheid :fedi:

@taylorlorenz You can move and take your contacts with you.

Tero Hänninen

@taylorlorenz You have a global reach and audience through federation, but you're still moderated by your local, familiar community - which you yourself have a complete freedom to choose on your own, not some faceless machine algorithm or billionaire whims.

Hedders

@taylorlorenz It's like the difference between a town and a shopping mall.

Alex Strasheim

@taylorlorenz Youtube works for Google, X works for Musk, Facebook works for Zuckerberg. But Mastodon works for us. No one else's interests or desires come before ours.

gloria dei

@taylorlorenz There's no central entity that can control what you see, when. And even if a single instance tried to do that, its users could just migrate to another instance.

David J. Atkinson

@taylorlorenz It is all about choice. As a reader, I see only what the people I follow post, plus what they boost. Not what some marketing algorithm thinks I should see. As a writer, it is about being assured that my followers have a chance to see my posts. No guarantees, but I’m not paying to be seen.

John Breen

@taylorlorenz 1 - There is no "algorithm" - you see posts from those you follow, unless you choose to explore.
2 - Your platform of choice does not make money by selling your personal information.

peter sibley

@taylorlorenz no elon , no zuck by technical design?

Katrina Katrinka :donor:

@taylorlorenz
It might be useful to reference the recent news on censorship on TikTok and BlueSky and Threads and Instagram.

I like my instance's rules, but if they ever change, I can keep my name and followers and just switch instances to one where I can continue as I have been. I don't have to worry about who owns the gated garden I'm allowed to interact in or how they feel about our demented dictator's whims from minute to minute.

It's more stable. It's also more international. I know what other people think around the world.

clew

It’s like having a neighborhood as well as the global connection, and the health of the neighborhood depends on you and the neighbors.

@taylorlorenz

william.maggos

@taylorlorenz

the magic of this place is that it gives the people all the power over what info, ideas and art gets attention. not governments or billionaire owners of media or corporate platforms. (not sure they'd want to hear that)

the problems with social media come down to the algos, not social media itself. that's what we're proving. the algos push a tabloid culture cause they know we'll pay attention to junk, even if we'd never share it. so they push the junk and our culture dets debased.

Paul

@taylorlorenz It's by and about the people.