Try Fedi Friday: Just One Day A Week, Experiment With Alternative Social Media

Culture

from the or-maybe-it's-fuck-off-friday dept

It’s not at all surprising why tons of people, including journalists, are sticking around Twitter even if they shouldn’t. Part of it is inertia. People were settled into what worked before, and change is difficult. Partly because of that, people are loathe to switch. Even those who have switched over to alternatives like Mastodon in the Fediverse find it difficult to do so. There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in which, when people first sign up, it feels “empty” because there’s no algorithm pumping their feed full of content (though I’ve found Mastodon to be quite engaging, to an almost overwhelming degree that I can’t keep up). You have to do a little bit of work, and that can feel like a lot.

But still.

There are so, so, so many reasons to not think this is a good state of affairs. The events of the last few years should demonstrate why relying on any centralized social media is inherently risky. This goes beyond just Twitter, but Elon has been turning that site into a ridiculous plaything in which he makes decisions based on which of his dumbest (but most loyal) fans he thinks will get the biggest kick out of them, rather than any sense of what’s best for the site’s users.

Last week, the pseudonymous Chance from the Chancery Daily publication suggested that we start embracing a concept of “Fedi Friday,” in which even people who feel that they’re going to stick around on Twitter for a while at least just spend one day a week exploring alternative social media, just so they have a general knowledge of it, and experience with it, in case they’re targeted in the next “look at me, I’m in charge now” purge from an insecure, whiny billionaire.

Seeing how Elon has handled the whole NPR situation should be instructive. His pettiness in the whole thing, including yesterday tweeting “defund NPR” should highlight why relying on Twitter is dangerous.

And, even if you think you support and agree with Musk, he’s shown little to no problem with stabbing his supporters in the back the second they push back even the slightest bit. He’ll even publish their private communications just to win a slap fight. So even if you think that Musk is magically “saving” Twitter, it still makes sense to find a space that isn’t controlled by him.

You don’t have to commit to leaving Twitter. You just need to spend a little time each week testing out the alternatives, of which there are many. The ActivtyPub-based “fediverse” is much vaster than people realize, going beyond just Mastodon (though they all interact in some ways). Larger companies such as Medium, Mozilla, and Flipboard are all embracing ActivityPub in one way or another, and others are poking around the edges as well.

There are, of course, a variety of other, centralized platforms, and you can test them out as well, but all of those run the same risk of what’s happened with Twitter: they can be run by a thin-skinned, whiny, out-of-touch billionaire with the maturity of a 15-year-old and the vindictiveness of a pre-school child who has had his ball taken away.

There are some other decentralized platforms worth checking out as well. Nostr is an incredibly simple and lightweight decentralized protocol that keeps improving. Bluesky, which was initially funded by Jack Dorsey to create an independent decentralized protocol that Twitter could adopt, is now in beta with its own AT Protocol. Both are decentralized and worth exploring, through not as widely adopted as the larger Fediverse.

If some of the specifics of Mastodon trouble you, you can look at some various ActivityPub-compatible forks like Calckey or Qoto that include many of the features that people sometimes feel are lacking from vanilla Mastodon (like quote tweets).

There is no one right way to do things. The point is that rather than settling for continuing to feed into a system you know is bad and problematic, at least spend some time on just one day a week (why not Friday) to explore the alternatives. Spend a bit of time find more active accounts to follow, interacting with some of the many people who use these services, and just prepare yourself for the future, rather than pretending there’s nothing to do but be the plaything for a childish billionaire who delights in making you suffer, so long as it pleases his fans.

Filed Under: activitypub, at protocol, centralized, control, decentralized, experiment, fedi friday, fuck off friday, social media
Companies: twitter