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

[robotdeathsquad@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz Monopolies are bad and there's no reason why "posts" need to be owned by a monopoly. Fediverse is good for the same reason why email is good.

[lawyersgunsnmoney@mstdn.social]

@taylorlorenz You control what you see in your feed and you control what you post. No propaganda, censorship, games, surveillance or trolls. How is that not better in every way?

[jackyan@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz Number one for me is, 'You are not making some rich **** even richer.' Secondly, you have better, more meaningful conversations.

[movie2468@mastodon.social]

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @taylorlorenz

I would agree. That’s why I left the snippet about big business and the use of X. Makes no sense.

[garretpolk@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@taylorlorenz No ads
No algorithms
Just people talking to each other

[jameslundblad@mstdn.social]

@taylorlorenz It's like the public radio of social networks, user supported social network.

[phil_tanner@mastodon.philtanner.com]

@taylorlorenz @jackyan this. And thirdly, you're speech isn't limited by the rich ****s.

You can say that JK Rowling is a massive TERF.

And you can block US politicians. Your eyeballs are not directly funding ICE publicity campaigns via advertising.

[jackyan@mastodon.social]

@Phil_Tanner @taylorlorenz Excellent points, Phil!

[classwario@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz How would you? When your bluesky is 1000% more active

[happytobe@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz You formulate your own algorithm using hash tags. Nothing is suggested to you. There are no ads. Thus, on your feed, you see only what you want to see and connect only with the people and businesses you want to be connected with. Yet, you can still scroll and snoop around the entire space if you want to.

[user47@vmst.io]

@taylorlorenz tell them it’s just like bluesky, but all of their marketing lies are actually true here

[lukisko@fe.disroot.org]

@taylorlorenz
I would say that we can observe big US tech media. If there is anything which points to problems in the US governments, the government forces them to remove it. The same also applies to the individual companies which enforces their own censorship - "if CEO is not happy with it it may get removed" (or if there may a an issue with removing it directly, the suggestion algorithm will never pick it)

[shammusomuffihan@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz

My decision to switch was based on the motivations of the people running it. Commercial social media is motivated by commercial priorities. The point of the fediverse is connection for connection's sake.

[daedalouseros@hollow.raccoon.quest]

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social the Fediverse is social media as it should have always been:

By the people, for the people, not by the corporation for the shareholders.

I might also say raw, personal interactions. On Fedi you interact with people, not algorithms designed to keep you doom scrolling.

[anatolegc@piaille.fr]

@Mastodon @taylorlorenz would you have some posters to promote Mastodon in my city?

[jjanhone@mementomori.social]

@taylorlorenz

Ok. An Instagram influencer was complaining about the awful comments she keeps getting and that make her want to stop. I told her it's partly because of the platform. Meta loves drama, it makes people to consume more time there. So they do not have reasons to stop bad behaviour.

On Mastodon people do not harrass others, at least on the Finnish bubble I'm in. If they would, they would be kicked out.

In Finnish school the kids that are being heavely bullied need to changed the school. Here it's the opposite. The bulliers need to find a new instance for themselves and that may be difficult.

[jwcph@helvede.net]

@taylorlorenz No ads. I think that's a highly convincing argument for many people & it's directly tied to decentralization: The fediverse is basically social media before algorithms & thanks to decentralization, if anyone wanted to add any kind of algorithmic reach functionality, everyone else would be free to ignore it - and without an algo, there's no business case for advertising in the 'verse.

[sam@break3.social]

@anatolegc@piaille.fr @Mastodon@mastodon.social @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social Posters and Flyers are a great idea to produce, this is something that I'm thinking of starting to create myself and start selling in the future.

Happy to chat about designs and see what we could come up with for certain cities and things

[bflipp@vmst.io]

@User47 @taylorlorenz

This could work.

But I feel like in a lot of ways people only view the internet as some mishmash of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, and their banking app.

If you take away the algorithm shoving content down their throat they are TOTALLY LOST because they've literally never had to seek out things on their own that interest them on the internet before.

Those people are sadly never going to find a home on Mastodon as it currently operates. They physically don't have the pathways in their brain or a good enough understanding of what the internet is and how it works to "get" what Mastodon is offering.

[moshimotsu@floss.social]

@taylorlorenz It comes down to what social behaviors are rewarded. On centralized platforms, we’re seeing algorithm changes that push people you’ve never met, products you don’t need, and news you can’t do anything about over the actual people in your lives, because that keeps eyes on screens, and on ads, and that makes revenue. In a decentralized environment, individual communities without profit incentive just focus on building welcoming spaces, the true goal of social media