I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.

[uncoolmouse@retro.pizza]

@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".

[pelavarre@social.vivaldi.net]

@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?

[urbanfoxe@mastodon.ie]

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

[brammeehan@ohai.social]

@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.

[cholling@bytes.programming.dev]

@philpetree @taylorlorenz Yes, because LLM crawlers famously respect robots.txt and only use known IP addresses.

[philpetree@mastodon.social]

@cholling @taylorlorenz There are other ways... like redirecting before serving the page.

[n_dimension@infosec.exchange]

@taylorlorenz @_elena @Tamtam

Sorry, shitty hosting, I'll get one from YouTube(!)
But only that's because I'm too sloppy to find other fediverse posts...

... Thanks for the feedback though, C44 peertube is running on a bottom tier VPS, it's an experiment

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YRJHIJy5Nno

[shellsharks@shellsharks.social]

@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

[zumbador@mefi.social]

@taylorlorenz decentralised social media is just the online equivalent of how people socialised offline.
It's like chatting with friends without being constantly interrupted by a salesperson trying to sell you something.

It's like being able to hang out a a party and choose who you spend time with, instead of the host constantly grabbing you by the arm, dragging you away from the person you were talking to and saying "here's a person you should be speaking to". And introducing you to some random person who immediately starts telling you everything that's wrong with your eating habits, your relationships, and your pets.

[nikatjef@mastodon.acm.org]

@krupo
I don't recall the names of the servers where I saw the advertisements, but IIRC, I only ever saw them in the local timelines.

Please remember that there are three different timelines you can watch, by default: your home timeline (which is defined by your choices), the federated timeline (which is inter-server toots), and the local timeline (which is toots by people on your server)

@RowinSpeez @taylorlorenz

[leavex@mastodon.social]

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.

[joemcl@theforkiverse.com]

@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.

[elborro@mastodon.social]

@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.

[ignacyy@mastodon.social]

@LShashaty @taylorlorenz That is the way, that is the only path to internet for good.

That is also why internet is, overall, huge net negative given user base of platforms like Instagram et al.

[elborro@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz I'm glad and happy to read what the people I follow are working on, dealing with, what thoughts and ideas they have, etc. That's what social media should be about. It's so much better than a timeline contaminated with ads and influencers you don't follow. It feels healthier, more natural.

[tokensane@mastodon.me.uk]

@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.

[parker@dsmc.space]

@thedansimonson @taylorlorenz I'm betting that with a 44 billion buy in Elon could do whatever he wanted to fedi, flood anything server with so much traffic, takedown requests, legal threats, etc., to make running an instance unviable.

Like with most things, I think the audience that fedi has attracted, who tend to filter out other audiences, matters more than the tech it's built on.

It's the same with Nostr. Nostr isn't uniquely a Bitcoin thing, but it's filled with all the Bitcoin people cause that's what they went with.

[bumblefudge@activitypub.space]

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social fancy meeting you here! big fan, read the book and everything.

this isn't at all what you asked for, but i wrote an essay once that might be useful in more of a bigpicture/media-industry context.

you might also find to check out (or interview) elena, who is kind of our resident fedifluencer <img class="not-responsive emoji" src="https://activitypub.space/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f49e.png?v=0b03a81bb1f" title="" />

[thedansimonson@lingo.lol]

@parker @taylorlorenz you’re still talking about trying to capture hundreds of independent servers, which would only grow as efforts to take out the bigger servers started

[cholling@bytes.programming.dev]

@philpetree @taylorlorenz How does that stop crawlers (and not other traffic)?