A few days ago I shared this post, which basically adds to the many warnings (within and outside the Fediverse) that the U.S. is quickly descending into fascism. What is new?

One of the (private) responses came Nuwagaba Gift, a 21-year old teacher, community organizer and farmer from Uganda, and we ended up exploring some of the historical details of this Sturmabteilung (SA). Among other things, Nuwagaba pointed out the crazy story of the co-founder and leader of the SA, Ernest Röhm, who, before he was killed in night of the long knives, was recruited by the Bolivian military ataché of the Netherlands to serve in the Bolivian army…

In this post I share three tips that have helped me find great people on Mastodon.

In contrast to your regular corporate Big Tech social media, the Fediverse is not packed with algorithms that build your world for you. You have to do it yourself.

To be sure, this has advantages. For example, your digital world will be a more active product of who you are and what you like, rather than what some algorithm thinks you like, on the basis of some superficial reading of who you are. Also, it prevents a few popular accounts from getting even more popular, which helps to spread and share the community’s attention more equally.

One reason why Mastodon, being part of the Fediverse, is great, is that whenever the next big thing pops up (let’s say the Mastodon of The Future), and it stays within the Fediverse, we will all stay connected. No more “starting over” our networks from scratch.

We all have friends and family who are like “so you want me to switch to Mastodon now? Last year it was Signal, and before that Telegram. I can’t be starting over all the time. I’m sticking to Whatsapp and Twitter”. Now they won’t have an excuse anymore. After switching to the Fediverse we never have to start over again.

Originally published 19 Jan 2022.

TLDR: I think the Fediverse - a group of community-owned, open-source, self-hosted, decentralized and interconnected social media platforms - is a cool and promising alternative to the absolute mess that we have let ourselves be trapped in. For more info on the Fediverse, see for instance this.

In short: I don’t like how large corporate social media platforms 1) collect our data, aggregate it and keep it to themselves, 2) use that data to influence us in a way that makes them and others exorbitant amounts of money (and also happens to undermine the foundations of our democracy by drawing people into fascist filter bubbles), and 3) make it artificially hard to leave them.