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

[texan_reverend@kind.social]

@taylorlorenz
Algorithm-free chronological feeds.

Ad-free.

Ability to follow hashtags and have those posts show in your Home feed which can foster communities.
(On many but not all Fediverse software)

No billionaire data extraction or "features" just to please investors.

No single entity can decide to shut it all down. Even if specific servers end up closing, users can migrate.

It can be messy or have issues, but there are often community-driven fixes or alternatives created.

[suzannealdrich@hachyderm.io]

@taylorlorenz its just like having your own website, except it’s your own social media.

[too_little_caffeine@dotnet.social]

@taylorlorenz No censorship. No paranoia that comes with wondering whether your posts are being suppressed. No algorithm changes that limit your reach.

[n_dimension@infosec.exchange]

@taylorlorenz

Why not corporate #socialmedia?

1. Algorithm - pushes specific ideology, causes depression in young adults, distorts reality.

2. Owners propagandise their ideology (see above)

3. Certain voices are censored, just like in communist China. YouTube kicked off Aljazera news. TikTok US censors anti-#ICE sentiment, anti-genocide voices.

4. At election time, owners and the wealthy change the outcome of actual elections with social media.

If you haven't seen the outstanding #fediverse promo video by @_elena (4m)
Highly recommend it;

Introducing the Fediverse a New Era of Social Media

The Fediverse explained in 4 minutes: watch now to discover a whole new world of social media, where privacy is respected, users are empowered, and Big Tech has no say. An Italian film maker Elena ...

Channel 44 (peertube.c44.com.au)

[too_little_caffeine@dotnet.social]

@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.

[qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz I mean I, a random person, got to talk to a sitting US rep today, despite not even being his constituent, which is one of the things people love about social.

Works here to.

[too_little_caffeine@dotnet.social]

@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.

[msbellows@c.im]

@taylorlorenz I compare Mastodon 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.

[alan@mindly.social]

@taylorlorenz Just one sentence: It's immune to the influence of billionaires, and resistant to the influence of politicians and state actors.

Subsequent sentences can enumerate the faults of a centralized approach, many of which are now painfully evident.

[dragonfamily@theforkiverse.com]

@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.

[wildeyedboyfromfreecloud@masto.ai]

@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.

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@utopiarte

How do you know that? Seems like her loss if true.

[scottgrimmett@mastodon.au]

@taylorlorenz If you research washing machines online, Mastodon won’t start trying to sell you one.

[hikergeek@mas.to]

@taylorlorenz

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.

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@utopiarte

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.

[not2b@sfba.social]

@taylorlorenz Key item is: a platform not owned by billionaires, but by volunteers who aren't out to exploit you.

[futurebird@sauropods.win]

@diraquel @taylorlorenz

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.

[crazydutchy@tulipgardenshow.masto.host]

@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.

[samvarma@fosstodon.org]

@taylorlorenz No algo pushing content; community-based content moderation vs top-down; open-source, auditable software

[ijimkoz@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz I would compare it to email. No one company owns all the email providers, but they all talk to each other.