Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I’m not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.
Found this post super informative as it relates to Mastodon, and thought Lemmy might also benefit from this perspective. I’m not sure I share his optimism, but his points seem sound to dampen some of the alarm bells over Meta joining the Fediverse.
I don’t know about everyone else here, but my social media use involves me actively trying to avoid The Algorithm™. I subscribe specifically to what I want to see, and actively avoid everything else. You can’t do this in the Threads app. So this is why I’ll be using Trunks or Megalodon over the Threads client.
Every social media platform, UseNet, BBS, and forum – and the planet Earth itself – has had it’s clique of garbage idiots, off in a corner, doing garbage idiot things. They’re inevitable. They’re even here on the Fediverse – in our own precious instances – already. If you don’t engage them – don’t follow that person you hate the most, or sub to the community that stands for everything you hate – things are actually pretty nice. All of this defederation talk feels extremely short-sighted, and is just going to torpedo the Mastodon platform we’ve started to come to enjoy.
If anything, the public declarations of political & social allegiances via choice of instance could just torpedo it all, and attract the trolling idiots like flies. But, we’ve already opened up that can of worms.
Yeah I’ve been taking a similar approach, to social media. I’ve avoided the algorithm.
I mean, I don’t really do social media in the usual sense, never had Facebook, nor Instagram. I did have a Twitter account but I used it to follow certain accounts and didn’t tweet, so it was basically an RSS feed. I used a 3rd party app and only saw my subs, no ads, no suggested/promoted posts.
Same for Reddit, used a 3rd party app, no ads, no suggested/promoted posts, I only ever read a feed of my subs.
My Reddit and Twitter subs/follows have been mostly hobbies, niche areas of interest, products I own, sports etc. no politics or news discussions. So I’ve really avoided being exposed to most of that toxicity I keep reading about.
This is why losing 3rd party apps was a big deal for me. I don’t want to read sponsored/promoted/suggested posts or ads. I’d rather not use the service at all if I have to.
That’s why I’ve fully moved to Lemmy and Mastodon.