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@taylorlorenz next time you get asked in TV say: "it is like twitter but you all are not there, that is the killer feature"

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social it is yours. It is noy up to some billionaire that sits on his golden throne to dictate to you what you and your community need.

It's your culture, your morales, your ethics. Not some pedophiles apprentice to tell you how to live.​

@taylorlorenz it's easier and safer to talk freely in your house or on the streets that in a random bar or on your work

@taylorlorenz The Fediverse is like the phone network.

No matter which phone provider you use (provider=service like Masto, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Bookwyrm etc.) or no matter which phone plan you have at that provider (plan=the different servers of the service) you can always call anyone. You can always switch providers or plans. And still keep all your contacts. And still call anyone.

@taylorlorenz When friends ask me: the fediverse is not a social media platform but a social network. The functionality and technical setup is comparable to e-mail (servers, addresses, clients) rather than a closed system or singular app.

@taylorlorenz to echo probably lots of folks, I find the email metaphor to work well — I can send anyone email and not just folks on Gmail or whatever — what if social media were more like that?

@taylorlorenz your social networks, your data

@taylorlorenz Mastodon is based a communication technology where social media can be implemented in a more decentralized and independent approach. The approach ensures that no one company can take over the media, or go out of business taking the entirely of the social network with it. The longevity of this approach ensures freedom from singular control, and makes it more like email and less like myspace, vine, twitter, or many others.

@taylorlorenz
Things like Twitter and Facebook are a high stress environment.. you're constantly worried you'll say something to upset someone.

Mastodon is chill. It's rare for anyone to take things you post as a personal insult (and if they do, the block button is really effective).

@taylorlorenz

1. Your company, university, or club can run a Mastodon server for itself, under its full control.
2. No one can tell you which apps to use or what kind of functionality it can have.
3. You don't have to chase friends or influencers from platform to platform. Set up a homebase on the Fediverse and follow them remotely wherever they go.
4. You own your contacts. No algorithm keeps you from seeing them, or them from seeing you.
5. Your server can be hosted in your country.

@taylorlorenz
No need for corporate overlords. No one is in charge. It's glorious.

@taylorlorenz
1) The goal of any company is to make money. Baking bread or providing digital platforms are different means of achieveing it. They all have a product and customers. In case of twitter or facebook, the customers are advertisers and the product is time users spend on their platforms. So in order to maximize their profits, they use algorithms, that maximize the users engagement. It doesn't matter if it's more funny cat videos or more fake news and extremist propaganda, whatever gets you engaged, will get amplified. The fediverse does not do that.

@taylorlorenz My main reason is no tech bro can buy it and even if my instance goes bad I can easily relocate to another.

@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?”

@taylorlorenz the most persuasive description I have heard is that, if you're not getting the support or moderation you need, you can just move without having to leave all your followers behind.

In that way it's more like phone providers or ISP in that because everything's connected but independent, you're not stuck with whoever you started with.

@taylorlorenz it's not trying to steer society towards fascism, All the algorithmic social media chucks far right content at you now, The algorithms have been tweeked to prefer it. They also block searches for "democrats" for instance . Or "Trump dementia". The CEOs have adopted the strategie to bring up fascist regimes so they will not be regulated. Also: Trump has people on the board of meta now.
Open source is our only chance at keeping a democratic society.

@taylorlorenz for me- I enjoy posting without anyone trying to monetize me or my data

@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.

@taylorlorenz No "blue checks" are needed to prove account authenticity when the server instance is self-managed by a government/organisation/private-person. It's opt-in; you'll only see messages from those you follow, or what they boost, or from those on the same server. There's no single organization behind it with absolute power over the servers and it's data (no addictive algorithms), or that can suddenly change the rules after it becomes very successful.

@taylorlorenz
Mastodon etc. are like a bulletin board on campus, or at work,
or City Hall, or a public library, and you don't need permission from your employer, school administration, government etc. to post on it, and they can't take your posted stuff down. A friendly volunteer makes sure that there's not really nasty stuff posted. If you don't agree with what the volunteer might remove, you can always post your stuff to a different bulletin board.

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.

@taylorlorenz Not succinct, but I've documented a bunch of things great about ActivityPub/Fediverse/Mastodon here - https://shellsharks.com/notes/2023/11/16/hark-threaders-the-fediverse-is-good-for-you

Notably though, Fedi offers two things you can't get with traditional centralized platforms.

- Deplatforming / censorship resistance (you can't still be blocked by instances or removed from an instance, but you can always stand up your own and connect with the rest of the network that hasn't blocked you)
- Portability of your following

@taylorlorenz I talk about the algorithm and advertising and how the whole experience, the whole incentive structure, changes so fundamentally when those aren’t the driving forces.

@taylorlorenz if you go through US immigration, they're not going to ask to see your Mastodon account.

@taylorlorenz

> Why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon

It matters that you’re here now

The draw for me to get into social media is that I pay to read TheAtlantic, like my mother’s mother before me. So I keep an eye open for people who write well there. 21 of the 934 people I follow at Twitter follow you at Twitter. I don’t follow you yet, but long ago I learned to feel glad any time I hear from you

Now you’re here too. It’s your words I’m looking for. You and Karen Swallow Prior and Heather Cox Richardson and Derek Thompson and so on. Thinking well and writing well

I’m in mid life. I don’t make time to watch video or look through photos. I’ve paid zero dollars to Substack. But I want to read great texts. And you put some of yours here

Where will you lead us next?

Is this the core of your question? Taylor Swift’s I’ve found the problem and it is me, as with G K Chesterton before her?

@taylorlorenz every other attempt at social media out there is essentially "what it we tried capitalism again! It's *our brand* of capitalism, it'll be different", whereas decentralized social media is "let's try anarchist social media this time. It'll take work on our part, but it won't have the same systemic issues as that other stuff".

@taylorlorenz

It's run by volunteers and rich perverts who want to rule the world don't get a dime from it.

@taylorlorenz When your instance gets taken over by a fascist, you can just change your instance and still be in the same network with mostly the same people. Bonus point the fascist instance gets blocked if your instance admins have any integrity.

@taylorlorenz @JonChevreau so many of the replies here are reactive: lists full of "no" and 'not' and "free from". It's like digging q big hole, with all the thrown-out descriptors littering the ground outside. It still leaves a hole, though; none of it actually describes the pleasure and value we *enjoy* on Fedi. That's harder to describe, but worth the time.

Describe how one *enjoys posts* in their feed. The pleasure of chitchat, discovery, new like-minded peers , slow thoughtful conversation

@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

@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.

@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.

@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..."

@taylorlorenz Amusement parks are great, but you're just a visitor passing through. A public playground is where you can meet your neighbours, kids grow up together, and the community decides if they want to add a swing set.

@taylorlorenz
The fediverse and its largest apps mastodon, lemmy, peertube and pixelfed have corpoverse cousins that they replace. In this case thats twitter, reddit, youtube and instagram.

On the fediverse all these platforms work together and you can comment with one on the other. You also have actual free speech, meaning you have no central moderation pushing an agenda. You can move freely between servers and even start your own with the rules you deem best.

Thats my pitch to onboard folks.

@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

@taylorlorenz

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.

@taylorlorenz Bottom-up governance means it serves you, not the other way around, and it's not profit-driven so there's no incentive for manipulation of users in the form of ads and algorithms.

@taylorlorenz

Its like if you love pizza and have 1000 pizza shops to visit and choose from, instead of just one pizza shop that decides, one day, to start making lemonade.

It's monopoly vs diversity: fediversity.

@taylorlorenz It’s like email and phone numbers: you can interact with anyone regardless of the provider. Think a YouTube user chatting with a X user.

@taylorlorenz It's a bunch of communities of users that decide how to govern/moderate themselves, with no billionaire owner nor algorithmic manipulation.

By default, communities can talk and share with other communities, but if a community starts producing unsavoury or illegal content, like Xitter's CSAM image generation, a community can decide to cut off contact with the problematic community.

@taylorlorenz Dave Eggers answers those questions in his book, The Circle.

@taylorlorenz Imagine your social media posts are little articles in a newspaper. The newspaper decides what articles to promote and makes money off the ads around them. A person like Musk or Bezos can buy the newspaper and shape it to their liking.

Or imagine everyone had their own printing press and can publish their own papers, without any ad-based promotion. You’re free to move anywhere with your printing press and your subscribers are yours, and you can reach them wherever you set it up.

@taylorlorenz "It's a lot of fun, I make a regular donation to my instance host, and nobody's algorithm messes with my timeline"

@taylorlorenz It's like the FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) of social media.
Put in Audre Lorde's terms, it's not--like all the "mainstream" platforms are--"the master's tools."

@taylorlorenz it feels smaller, in a good way. Less performative, easier to choose the people with whom you interact. Larger platforms naturally become hierarchical, this place is more of a community as long as you're not trying to speak *at* people (my experience, anyway)

@taylorlorenz I really struggled to boil this down in a quote toot but I'll try for a boiled down answer here: it's ELON proof

and custom emojis

@taylorlorenz Because billionaires are sociopaths and cannot be trusted.

Keep it simple.