Written by [email protected] on Dec 20, 2022
My desire to move out of Twitter has existed long before the recent shennanigans by the new CEO. Social media is a big aspect in my life, as I am able to stay connected with friends, and get a glimpse into their lives, and have information to share with one another. It is not about getting the most followers and building an audience, it should be about staying close with your friends and building a community.
Main stream social media applications are built on a capitalistic society in which it measures success by selling ads, which by proxy means increasing user engagement, which by proxy means building an addictive app. I am not going to say that human behavior is fully understood, but social media addiction is a real problem.
Over the years Twitter has forced many features that could be described as methods to increase engagement. From the most annoying ones, such as asking me to enable notifications on my phone, to more discrete ones, such as displaying tweets that I favorited to my friends. To possibly complete unethical ones, such as tracking user’s phones to check if they are walking into a competitor’s store [story] [story2].
Moving to a self-hosted platform gives the users more control of how they choose to interact with the platform, and also build tools on top of a more open ecosystem.
Moving to a different social platform is not going to be easy. The apps are still unpolished, administrators are still figuring out the best way to run servers, all your favorite friends are still not present on the new place.
But at least the community has the choice on how to evolve, and diverge for the different needs. These are just small stepping stones for the bigger picture. In the future, application developers can make new gallery applications, new ways to interact with the users, and not be restricted by Twitter’s limited API, killing first-party apps like Periscope, or the many third-party apps.
There are already better alternatives to the official Mastodon app on both iOS and Android, and browser extensions, like FediAct, that provides a more seamless experience on the web.
One concern that I hear about Mastodon is that it is going to build even more of an eco chamber, but Twitter has never been the place to gather public opinion anyway. Several times I have tried to open tweets by important figures (such as Trump or Biden), the reply section is just filled with “quick wit funny replies”, memes, or just complete garbage.
It is actually kind of hard to change opinion on a big subject, and the Twitter experience is not place to do it. My use of social media is to be connected with the communities I enjoy, and up to date with the latest events that affects me and my friends.
In the future, tooling could also be built for the Fediverse that allows the user to choose to filter out large discussions by server. Servers could build up reputations in having level-headed smart users, and be good place to pay attention.
It might take some time for the Fediverse ecosystem to stabilize, good code of conducts are defined for the different communities, and ways to block the toxic behavior.
New members will have to experiment with different communities, find one that matches their values, and feel like that they are part of server with friends. People might sometimes be asked to migrate their account to a new server that matches their behavior, but it should also make it easy to separate the meme posters from the serious discussions.
“We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
This is going to be a hard fight, and I am putting a lot of my energy behind it. The internet has been continually getting worse with subscription services, pay walls, mass user tracking, and hostile business practices. I have a bit of nostalgia from the old internet, where you be part of a small community, playing in the same game servers, getting familiar with the regulars, and making life long friendships.
This is one battle that the users can have long term benefits not being pawns to faceless corporate business practices, and take back control of the data we own and share.