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

[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.

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@wiredfire falling down @cmconseils 's meme tunnel was not what I expected to do this evening but I got some great laughs and it reminded me of another thing few people have mentioned to @taylorlorenz - the extensive and enthusiastic use of #alttext to not only make this place more inclusive for those who need it but to make content easier to understand (and in the case of jokes flying over peoples' heads... Also because they need it).

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@taylorlorenz @ben the other thing that struck me ages ago was that if I got notifications on Twitter I'd get a bit of an anxiety spike as the network got progressively more toxic.

Here, it's 99% pleasant and when it's not, it's still not stressful, just a case of folks getting a little too earnestly pedantic and even those edge cases are weirdly endearing.

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@taylorlorenz @bigolewannabe and given the weird ways Google has been presumably trying to fight spam, it's in some ways breaking email.

I try to email folks from my third party email service and Gmail will periodically block my legitimate messages if I cc too many Gmail people, so I have to use a mass email product instead to reach them which.... Hurts my head.

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@futurebird @livcomp I mean the world is bigger than the US. Federal or Confederation, to think in Canadian, is considered a good thing elsewhere

[momo@social.linux.pizza]

@alessandro
You mean kinda like Bezos owns Amazon (with Amazon Prime Video) and the Washington Post?
@taylorlorenz

[juergen_hubert@mementomori.social]

@taylorlorenz

I tend to argue with the infamous Enshittification cycle:

Commercial platforms are initially good for users until they capture the market. Then they make things worse for users in order to sell them out to other commercial interests. Then they make things worse for their business partners too in order to make more money.

Decentralized, non-commercial media avoid this trap:

They have no financial motive to make the user experience worse.

And if a specific instance does get worse, their users can move elsewhere and take their social media connections with them.

Thus, decentralized, non-commercial social media can actually get _better_ over time, while commercial "walled gardens" will only get worse over time.

[krupo@infosec.exchange]

@futurebird @diraquel @utopiarte notifications from my closest friends are my solution too

[dp0@mastodon.social]

@catnip @taylorlorenz Interconnectivity, the way the internet was meant to be. No matter which provider, client, or technology you're using, you still can connect an communicate with everyone.

Corporations want to achieve that through monopolies, whilst the fediverse (of which Mastodon is part of) does so by using common and non-proprietary standards.

[nomenloony@nomenloony.com]

@dannotdaniel @taylorlorenz my version is that it can't be bought by billionaires, and if a billionaire sweeps in and buys a large server we just fediblock that server.

See also Bluesky.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@taylorlorenz i would personally focus on how fedi, by its nature, is moderated by real people with a real stake in their community. i think much of why this platform is better than corporate platforms is moderation via social contract

[livcomp@hachyderm.io]

@krupo @futurebird for sure it is, and the USA is also kinda deflating these days.. i think all roads should lead to 'fediverse' as the place we are and the place to be.

[wolvericcatkin@tech.lgbt]

@taylorlorenz Tbh, the most challenging benefit to highlight, is how much abusive content your admins are probably protecting you from... The one experience of harassment I have had since I started using Mastodon was also pretty cool, as after I reported the account, their instance administrators almost immediately handled it, by deleting their account... Maybe they'd just been going under the radar, but I guess they didn't like their extensive history of that sort of behaviour...

[reddog@syzito.xyz]

@ScottGrimmett @taylorlorenz I have one to sell.