@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.

@taylorlorenz if nothing else its a blissful respite from the corporate and advertising hellscape that predominates the majority of the internet.

@taylorlorenz i have a take with respect to police work and surveillance. With decentralized networks, digital surveillance becomes unnecessary and criminal circles can be tracked in the traditional way, by infiltrating their Mastodon servers.

Finding criminal networks in a large centralized network requires scanning every single message and networks s can't be found so easily because the volume of random interactions and noise.

@taylorlorenz there's less censorship because content policies and their enforcement are made by your peers, not by corporations whose primary goal is profit and who are strongly incentivized to silence dissent of all kinds

@taylorlorenz fediverse platforms are like a table at the local weekend market: anyone can set one up, dirt cheap, little to no infrastructure, small audience, supported by other folks doing the same thing. Perfect place to sell your watercolours or canvas for support for adding speedbumps on that residential road that Uber has been directing drivers to take at 60km/h.

It's not Wal-Mart, it never will be, it doesn't want to be. It's different, and for a bunch of folks it's a lot better.

@taylorlorenz

I usually lead with the concept that the infrastructure of the fediverse is controlled by its community, not a corporation.

The critical part is understanding that the constellation of servers where all this is hosted is owned (or atleast paid for and administrated by) people and not profit-seeking corporations.

@taylorlorenz
Social media with:
No ads
No algorithm
No oligarchs

@taylorlorenz Think writing and books. Humans have had writing for millennia, books for centuries. But it was the printing press that democratized the written word. The pamphlet and broadside replaced the tome and codices. With the passing of the monastic requirement of manual copy, suddenly the voices recorded were not solely those at the pinnacle of power. Decentralized, in a very important way, means all of us.

@taylorlorenz

Your trust in posing the question to us makes the case: on the fediverse one may crowdsource knowledge without a commercially focused algorithm polluting the interaction with wasteful content.

@taylorlorenz No ads. That’s it.

@taylorlorenz No one can ever own it or sell it.