@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.