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

[catriona@tech.lgbt]

@taylorlorenz Local moderation is engaged moderation. On Twitter (even pre-Musk) and other centralised platforms, moderation is impossible (or at least not cost-effective) to scale, so you get arbitrary decisions and systems that are very easy to abuse.

I got suspended from Twitter more than once for "hate speech" when in fact I was objecting to hate speech, while none of my reports for hate speech ever went anywhere. Here, not only can I much more easily find an instance with moderators I trust, but if they lost my trust I would simply move to a different instance.

[dannotdaniel@hellions.cloud]

@taylorlorenz I really struggled to boil this down in a quote toot but I'll try for a simpler answer here: it's ELON proof

^{and custom emojis}

[ramshackle@rwn.lol]

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social cannot be bought by musk, Ellison or any other oligarchs

[pttp@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz It's like the FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) of social media.
Put in Audre Lorde's terms, it's not--like all the "mainstream" platforms are--"the master's tools."

[mattedgar@social.coop]

@taylorlorenz "It's a lot of fun, I make a regular donation to my instance host, and nobody's algorithm messes with my timeline"

[finestructure@mastodon.social]

@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.

[pixelpusher220@dmv.community]

@taylorlorenz

It's also good to explain the reverse.

Would you accept it if Gmail couldn't email Yahoo or Hotmail and you had to have separate accounts for every place you have friends?

That's what FB / Twitter / Reddit / YT are. Things that can't talk to each other. If you have a friend on YT, you can't follow them from your FB account.

Fedi allows *all* of them to talk to each other.

[irinarokosz@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz Dave Eggers answers those questions in his book, The Circle.

[schmaker@schmaker.eu]

@taylorlorenz "Imagine accessing instagram from your already existing Xitter account. YouTube from Facebook. TikTok from Reddit. Imagine your content not being accidentally moderated by AI while hatespeech remains all around. Imagine your timeline feed not trying to manipulate you to buy something or interact. This is Fediverse!"

[vinay@veganism.social]

@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.

[schmaker@schmaker.eu]

@taylorlorenz Also always remember to share this introduction video from @elena

How do Fediverse work [EN]

[logical_error@fosstodon.org]

@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.

[craigduncan@mastodon.au]

@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.

[inpc@go.mxtthxw.art]

@taylorlorenz Corporate social media is a never ending Benny Hill sketch.

[tereya@tech.lgbt]

@taylorlorenz How often do you hear about people getting banned from their email account? Mastodon enables freedom and decentralization in the way email did/does for communication.

[rebelgeek99@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz @JonChevreau it's like browsing a mega-mall of professionals and niche hobbyists and artists and animal lovers and photographers and gardeners and solarpunks and writers and shit posters. Most importantly , very few choads. Like Twitter at its best but not commercialized and purely content driven.

[jonchevreau@mstdn.ca]

@taylorlorenz As a semi-retired financial journalist, Mastodon is usually my first point of call for catching up on political and financial news, plus a more eclectic mix of the arts, health, travel and bizarre miscellany. It works, is free of commercial clutter and the bonus is it’s not owned by the Oligarchy.

[pixelpusher220@dmv.community]

@zymurgic @taylorlorenz

I've taken to calling FB / Twitter / etc 'Social Media' b/c they want you to consume the media they choose

Fedi is 'Social Networking' b/c the point is interacting with others.

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@RowinSpeez @taylorlorenz @nikatjef no centrally pumped forced ads, but I'd legitimately want to know which server has tried this.

I did a cursory search and this was a top hit that barely answered the question

(www.reddit.com)

[hosford42@techhub.social]

@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.