I'm in Love with the Fediverse
Back in May of this year, I returned to the Mastodon account I'd
opened when Twitter went to shit the hands of Elon Musk. I
don't remember the exact date. The years around the COVID pandemic
are fuzzy.
I hadn't really used it before, and this time I decided to start following people other than the dead accounts from that first week, the angry signups that eventually turned into abandoned accounts.
I followed some people from Latin America I came across, along with some of the authors of blogs I'd been reading since I got back into blogging, about six months earlier. That was enough to get a live feed going. Those first follows, with their reposts and likes, led me to more people, and suddenly my feed was really interesting.
The lack of a revenue-driven algorithm
This is the best part of the whole Fediverse thing. Nothing's shoved down your throat endlessly. Your feed is chronological and consists only of posts from people you follow. If you don't want to see likes and/or reposts, you can turn them off.
This is also what puts most newcomers off. When you first sign up, the place looks dead. We're so used to social media being extremely noisy, with content appearing faster than we can scroll, that an empty feed feels broken. On mainstream platforms, if you don't follow anyone, the algorithm fills your feed for you. Because no matter what, they need you to stay engaged.
Within the first 10 minutes on X, you're already angry at somebody. On Threads, you've read the same post ten times, each from a different "author." On Instagram, you probably already feel inadequate.
The first 10 minutes on Mastodon are pure silence. An empty container waiting to be filled with the people and things you actually want to see.
Numbers don't matter
Followers vs. following? Ratios? Reach? Whatever. In my experience, most people on Mastodon don't care much about any of that. I used to care, and now I barely even think about it.
Want more reach? Engage with people. Talk to them. Most will talk back at you. What a novel idea, right? Like in the real world!
You quickly learn that if you post at 2 a.m., almost nobody will see your post, because there's no algorithm to bring it back from the dead. And that's so refreshing.
I suppose some people do care about numbers, but they must be a small minority. Because if numbers are what you're after, you probably wouldn't be on Mastodon in the first place.
Things are simple
Want to download an image from your timeline? A video? An audio file? A GIF? Right-click and save. As simple as that. As the web always should have been.
Want to move to another Mastodon instance (think of it as a server)? You can do that in a few clicks. Want to change your address, not just your username? Sure. Want to cross-post to Bluesky? You guessed it. You can do that, too.
There's more than Mastodon
Mastodon isn't the only thing out there. There's Pixelfed, an image-based social network (think Instagram) that works pretty much the same way. I moved all my artwork images from Instagram to an instance with the best URL in the universe: punk.photos.
Looking for a video platform? There's PeerTube. Something like Facebook? There's Friendica, if you're into that sort of thing.
There's BandWagon for music, Funkwhale for sharing audio, and Lemmy for open discussions, Reddit-style.
There's even something similar to TikTok: Loops, from the creators of Pixelfed.
As you can see, there's a whole world outside Meta, X, and TikTok.
Come join us!
If you haven't tried it, I invite you to give it a shot. Find me on any of my profiles and say hi. I'll almost certainly say hi back.
I'm thinking of trying some of the other services listed above, too. I'll update this post as I do.
Punx.social is a good resource for learning about the Fediverse and getting started. It's geared toward independent bands, but the information is useful for anyone.