Dear Fedi friends,

[rijim@mastodon.social]

@_elena My Fedi story changed my life. I've always had bad teeth. Over time I've had many pulled; been w/o molars on the bottom & 1 side of the top forever. Had to be careful eating focusing on soft foods to avoid choking. Gone to US dentists for implants & got 2 estimates at $60,000 US WITH insurance which I can't afford. 2 years ago, a Fedifriend posted: if you need high quality lowcost dentalcare let me know." She sent details & I've been going to Spain for my whole mouth for 1/4 the US cost.

[juliancday@writing.exchange]

@_elena It feels durable in a way that other platforms aren't - individual instances might go down, but the wider, federated whole continues without a blip.

[halcy@icosahedron.website]

@_elena What I like about the Fediverse is that there are real communities here in a way that there isn't and cannot be on websites where every bit of interaction with other humans, every who and what, is shaped by optimization to maximize some metric, like "engagement" or "ad views". It feels more natural here and more normal, and at the same time, messy, the edges haven't been filed off like they have off like they have off the experience of Consuming a continuous stream of content selected to keep you on a website as much as possible.

Most of the things that absolutely destroy peoples brains on social media sites are *just not a thing here*, which is healthy in a way that is genuinely difficult to explain to people who haven't tried it and don't remember this kind of thing.

Not that we don't still have problems (boy do we still have problems), but here, we can start working on fixing them. while on the corporate social media websites, everything just always gets worse, by design.

[tintouli@mastodon.social]

@_elena 1/ on a plus de contrôle sur ce que l'on voit (filtrage de personnes, de mots, suivi de tags particuliers) 2/ on a plus de contrôle sur ce qu'on écrit (édition de post, les lecteurs sont avertis dès modifications, on contrôle la portée des posts en choisissant le degré entre privé et complètement public)

[mirou@mastodon.social]

@_elena Pour nous ( @2bcompany ), c'est le moyen de donner une image plus vivante de nos activités (théâtre contemporain), sans passer par les réseaux commerciaux quittés début 25. Nos graphistes et webmestres (Atelier Poisson et Lionel Tardy à Lausanne) on pu (je crois relativement facilement), intégrer nos publications sur notre homepage 2bcompany.ch

[mirou@mastodon.social]

@_elena et pour moi plus personnellement, c'est aussi de retrouver un réseau à l'ancienne, où l'on peut rencontrer (presque) réellement des gens, communiquer, échanger, sans se voir balancer des publications commerciales à tout bout de champ.

[menelion@dragonscave.space]

@_elena Des APIs ouverts et des flux chronologiques. En fait, la possibilité de créer des apps (clients) dédiées 100% accessibles pour les non-voyants est personnellement ma raison essentielle pour être ici.

[jhein@mastodon.social]

@_elena The ability to:

Filter my feed using keywords. Every platform needs this.

Cater my own feed to something meaningful and manageable instead of being at the whims of the slop algorithm.

The lack of ads and there being no incentives for them or any enshitification to be added in.

I can decide exactly what notifications I want or don't want, instead of having to choose between none or too many.

The privacy options are much stronger here than every other social media or content platform.

[emeline@piaille.fr]

@_elena Je pense savoir dans quel cadre tu interviens (l'annonce est publique sur... d'autres réseaux ) et je regrette infiniment ne pas pouvoir être disponible. Je me suis manifestée pour obtenir l'enregistrement.
J'ai hâte, mais vraiment hâte de voir ta présentation !

[kuranobi@mas.to]

@_elena Le fédiverse est pour tout qui respect les droits des autres.

[worldwidewerner@mastodon.social]

@_elena
I left Twitter, expecting to find a similar experience on Mastodon. But what i found instead was community.

I'm brought back to the ways of the old internet, where humans matter and interactions are not fueled by algorithms, but curiosity.

[hallvors@oslo.town]

@worldwidewerner @_elena this

[eetschrijver@mastodon.social]

@Marabilles
Je pourrais t'expliquer ce que c'est qu'un Brompton, mais je ne veux pas faire trop reply guy.
@_elena

[leavex@mastodon.social]

@_elena Cher Président Macron, pourquoi n'êtes-vous pas encore présent sur le Fediverse ? Cessez de laisser cet espace aux trolls et aux extrémistes, quittez X.

#LeaveX

[shom@gts.shom.dev]

@_elena thanks for advocating for the fedivers and looks like you have a lot of feedback but I'll add my voice anyway.

Knowing that when people build communities here around their common interests, it is not because of "reach", "influencing", "hacking the algorithm", "brand deals", and other "link in bio" nonsense. But it is for the pure joy of sharing what they love with other humans; to form bonds that transcend national, technical, and corporate boundaries. The original promise of the free internet.

[tuckfrump@mastodon.social]

@_elena privacy and independence, no big tech companies controlling what we say , and no misinformation like Facebook.

[stephaniemoore@mastodon.online]

@_elena The Fediverse is regularly an inspiring alternative vision. I draw on it constantly as a reminder that we are the ones build who build these systems and we can build better systems that reflect different values and priorities besides extraction and capitalization and algorithmic injustice.

I’ll be using the Fediverse as an example in an upcoming keynote that’s on ethics and hope and metamodernism. I look forward to seeing what you speak on once you’re able to share.

[funkylab@mastodon.social]

@shom @_elena hypothesis: the same people exist elsewhere too (they very much did on twitter!), and also, accounts with a mission, for whom reach is the main goal, do, luckily, exist here, and in abundance, too.

Heck, most of the "Mastodon is so great!" accounts here *are* absolutely trying to reach as many people as possible. That's a very valid motive for saying something in public! Don't discount that as undesirable. To an outsider, disclaiming reach makes the platform sound inauthentic.

[xodus_online@mastodon.social]

@_elena reasons for switching from Big Tech to the Fediverse are outlined in http://xodus.online/why

[funkylab@mastodon.social]

@shom @_elena accounts with a mission that both have and work towards high reach:
- the very highly boosted accounts of European institutions posting about regulations, initiatives
- FOSS projects
- civil rights organizations
- animal welfare orgs and individuals
- political pundits (yes, plenty of these here, look at "Trending" at mastodon.social!)
- artists that actually need the publicity for making a living
- sex and other personal service workers