I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
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@taylorlorenz Stability. When centralized services go offline, everyone goes offline. On the fediverse, only those on a downed instance suffer and they can make a backup account on a different server if necessary.
@taylorlorenz Identity and authority. If our public services or even brands were to set up their own instances on domains that they control then they are incredibly hard to spoof.
If a post comes from a handle at news.brandName.com or social.service.gov then you know it's official.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz I compare it to email: no one can force you to watch ads before reading your email. No one can buy emails.com and make it so everyone only gets Nazi emails. Why? Because email is just a protocol. No one owns email, and there are thousands and thousands of servers.
Mastodon is like email for social media.
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@taylorlorenz As an American it is safer for me, also I get to see more of the world than just U.S.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz I've found that smaller digital coops such as socialbc.ca and cosocial.ca give users opportunities to actually connect with real world people in their communities, and to have a collaborative process for making large decisions (e.g. de-federation, server policies, adding extra services like Pixelfed, etc)
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I get why they call it a "decentralized network" but that description was kind of a turn off for me before I came here because I thought you were trapped in a little server with a few dozen people and what's the point of that?
The power is decentralized but the communication need not be. You can talk to anyone from any community. You can have all of those fun instances of cross pollination when different communities intersect.
The more the fedi grows the better this gets.
offtopic @futurebird
Or most of us are at least muted by @taylorlorenz, or mastodon is broken, or on her page on mastodon.social only show up the replies by people she follows.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz No ads. My IG had become an insidious place just trying to sell me things and shuffle me through content. It wasn’t “social media” any more. Since coming here my screen time is down, my notifications are down, and my pick ups are down and yet I feel more connected to news, people, and myself. Funny how that works.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz You know how someone bought Twitter and it turned to
overnight? That can't happen. I don't get ads every 5th post. Everything else is gravy after that. -
offtopic @futurebird
Or most of us are at least muted by @taylorlorenz, or mastodon is broken, or on her page on mastodon.social only show up the replies by people she follows.
How do you know that? Seems like her loss if true.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz If you research washing machines online, Mastodon won’t start trying to sell you one.
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How do you know that? Seems like her loss if true.
Visiting her toot on mastodon.social itself, there are quiet a few answeres visible.
If I remember well, the comments by this profile still showed up in her last toot a few days ago that mentioned tictoc.
(perhaps I shouldn't have pointed out indirectly to another commenter that she never answeres to anyone)The comment by this profile, including some mindmaps about the fedi, was shared by another profile located on mastodon.social, so in any case I guess it's only muted by her. I suppose blocks wouldn't federate at all.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
The fact that is not run for profit means no ads, & no algorithms to drive engagement. Those algorithms direct us towards content designed to enrage, because that has been found to (generally) be more engaging. It also brings out the worst in people, provoking angry reactive responses, rather than carefully considered ones.
Whilst instances vary & more work is required on the part of users to curate their feed, the result is often a much kinder & more respectful place. Robust discussions can & often do still occur.
And the fact is that we simply don’t care about follower numbers. There are some people I often chat to because we follow the same hashtags, but haven’t got around to following. It’s about people & connections, not statistics.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
Actually one of the things that is better is that it's moderation is also decentralized. Thousands of people, users and server admins, contribute in an organic way to keep the content mostly civilized.
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Visiting her toot on mastodon.social itself, there are quiet a few answeres visible.
If I remember well, the comments by this profile still showed up in her last toot a few days ago that mentioned tictoc.
(perhaps I shouldn't have pointed out indirectly to another commenter that she never answeres to anyone)The comment by this profile, including some mindmaps about the fedi, was shared by another profile located on mastodon.social, so in any case I guess it's only muted by her. I suppose blocks wouldn't federate at all.
She's a pretty popular journalist who is at least interested in this place.
Eventually if someone never seems to comment people stop paying attention to them, well at least I do.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz Key item is: a platform not owned by billionaires, but by volunteers who aren't out to exploit you.
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@taylorlorenz I usually start by explaining the chronological feed with no publicity; then, that it's not a platform, but a software run in many different places, so there is no one owner; then, I circle back to the fact that there are no algorithms choosing what you see on your feed.
I have the feeling I'm not persuasive enough, so I would love to hear other strategies.Yeah I low key hate the chronological feed. I wish I could customize it more and design my own algorithm so I didn't miss posts from people who don't post frequently, for example.
I will take it over an algorithm I can't control, however.
The big sell for me is no ads, including fake bot accounts that are just selling something or pushing something. Getting out from the bubble of influence of the worse people in the world.
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She's a pretty popular journalist who is at least interested in this place.
Eventually if someone never seems to comment people stop paying attention to them, well at least I do.
@futurebird
I guess, and understand, that there are different ways to engage with social media and suppose that in particular exposing yourself on sites like twitter can lead to a standard strict behavior when it comes to putting yourself out there.At the same time, asking "the community" about input and muting most of it by default is kinda not useful.
anyway
.. a pretty face of a women that shows her teeth will always have her fellowship .. -
@taylorlorenz let us know how we can help - we think a lot of people are pretty tired of having their data mined, conversations sold, and commercial companies injecting inauthentic content into their timelines. Maybe that’s just us? Happy to have a chat if it would be useful.
@Mastodon @taylorlorenz I especially prefer how my timelines are in chronological order rather than some random order based on algorithms no regular user understands. Also, Mastodon allows the use of third party apps, so I can pick one that best suits my needs as a blind user. Most of the other big tech companies no longer allow this. And their native apps or websites are not very user friendly to me.
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I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz No algo pushing content; community-based content moderation vs top-down; open-source, auditable software
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Yeah I low key hate the chronological feed. I wish I could customize it more and design my own algorithm so I didn't miss posts from people who don't post frequently, for example.
I will take it over an algorithm I can't control, however.
The big sell for me is no ads, including fake bot accounts that are just selling something or pushing something. Getting out from the bubble of influence of the worse people in the world.
@futurebird
> so I didn't miss posts from people who don't post frequentlyYou can set notifications for profiles by activating the bell.
It would be neat to customize that more to incial post's, not necessarily answers (or rehares).
And a timeline only for original toots, not reshares of profiles would be fine.
(anyway, that are mastodon specific details, from over here that's different all together) -
I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.
How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective
@taylorlorenz I would compare it to email. No one company owns all the email providers, but they all talk to each other.
