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Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy (www.404media.co)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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[–] 99 points 2 years ago (10 children)

The thing about Mastodon for influencers is... you don't even have to leave Twitter. Just post to both.

If enough people get into that habit, it makes the transition much easier for everyone.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Twitter is very friendly to influencers because it automatically boosts popular posts and hashtags. Mastodon doesn't by design, so they're gonna have a much, much harder time there.

    That's an okay decision to take, but it makes it hard to grow the network because there's a lower financial incentive.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Mastodon doesn't by design, so they're gonna have a much, much harder time there.

    In theory, yes. But what early switching folks are reporting is that the total impressions are much lower on Mastodon, but the total engagement is much higher, for the same effort.

    Which is confusing unless we factor in what we know about Twitter farming bot account on purpose to create an inflated appearance of success.

    Of course, there's still the matter of Twitter genuinely has orders of magnitude more users. So as an either/or proposition, no way does it, yet, make sense to ditch Twitter for Mastodon.

    But for the value-to-reach ratio, with the same effort applied to both, anyway, Mastodon is actually already a better value than Twitter.

    All that to say, yeah, Twitter is better, purely due to the user base, and Mastodon's algorithm actually treats creators better. Which we kind of already knew, as it was created by people fed up with Twitters abusive algorithms.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Please tell me how I can keep posting to twitter after I was banned for being a journalist?

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago

    My point was for people who are scared to leave Twitter. They don't have to. They can just dip their toes in while still holding their Elon-themed blanket.

    I understand that often you can't just drop the platform where all the engagement is when your job is to promote something. However, you can still enable people who do want to make the switch.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Make another account

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    That one got banned too. I can't even signup for a lot of these services. I get banned before I even make a post.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Honestly, if you're going to do both, do bluesky and mastodon. Bluesky isn't properly decentralised the way mastodon is, but a lot of influential people are there. Also it's way better than twitter was.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    You need to use a different device and IP address. IP addresses are a dead giveaway for someone trying to create a second account, and even with a different address, browsers are easy to reliably fingerprint.

    The reason for using an entirely different device* is to prevent advertising crap baked into your software from sending Twitter or other platforms any unique advertising ID associated with one of your old, banned IP addresses.

    *With careful setup, a virtual machine with a dedicated VLAN and internet connection would work.

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    • [–] 72 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What's happening right now is eerily close to the "Gleichschaltung" that happened after Hitler took over Germany, basically bringing all media in line with the will of the party and the leader. It was news media then, it is social media now. Because for many people, social media is their primary news source.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Will smaller alternatives be enough to upend their plans?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    The smaller alternatives will get bigger as the mainstream social media gets worse and worse. The job for us, in whatever way we can, is to build the alternatives and make them ready to handle the influx, and make them welcoming to new people.

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    • [–] 70 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    It blows my mind that places like the transit systems that were on Twitter haven't migrated over to their own Mastodon server. They're not that hard to set up, and there's so little risk when you just don't accept public signups on your domain.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    I agree. The Fediverse stuff is really well suited for governments and businesses. They can be in complete control of their instance, post whatever information they want distributed, and they don't need to rely on any other business for it.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yeah. I'm surprised businesses haven't been quicker to setup self-hosted Mastodon as their primary, and then mirror that to Twitter and Bluesky and such, for disaster recovery protection.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Businesses I understand because that involves listening to your tech guy and approving time for it, and businesses hate spending money, even if it wouldn't really cost them that much in practice. They have a lot of institutional inertia.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    Completely agree! Seeing the dumb little logos all over timetables and the sides of buses always makes me roll my eyes. First they had to change the "t" logo to the bird, then that's out of date on a billionaire's whim and they have to replace it with the apocalyptic "X". Come on guys, this is getting embarrassing. Stop treating big private companies like Daddy, it's time to stand on your own feet. The tools are there.

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    • [–] [S] 34 points 2 years ago (19 children)

    Checked the rules and I think this is allowed? But if you've still got reddit and don't mind being a fediverse evangelist please go hit this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1i6rp3o/decentralized_social_media_is_the_only/

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Especially for Redditors, Lemmy is such a no-brainer alternative. I think I'm gonna try to do more, and try to bring some of my audio communities out here by promoting Lemmy in the subs.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (13 children)

    Did hit it. Keep servicing that thread, you're doing well. It's blowing up a bit.

    Repost this in other communities in Lemmy. Shitpost, technology, etc.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (12 children)

    Oh no. Centralized social media fights back! 😂

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (11 children)

    Damn we had a good run.

    EDIT: We'll Streisand em

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    What reason?

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Didn't say but I'm pretty sure it's because I edited to add lemmy specific information. In particular I mentioned the apps

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    I caught it in time, i am a fresh convert.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago*

    Welcome.

    The biggest thing you have to learn is that everything defaults to "active" instead of "hot." If it seems stale after setting the primary to "hot" in your settings, choose "top 6 hours" and "top 12 hours" to see more content. It's not as addicting so it takes a little time to settle in to the calmness, but it's great after you get used to it.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    lmao clicked that link and one of the first comments I see is “reddit is pretty decentralized”

    I get that 404 needs to make money but this article could greatly benefit from not being paywalled. Or at least list a definition of what decentralized social media is with some actual recommendations before the paywall because people clearly have no fucking clue

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

    How much of the fediverse runs on AWS and how willing do we think besos would be to pull the plug on those?

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Lemmy.ca will be moved on a fat server in Vancouver colo. Currently on cheap hardware in OVH. Not sure about .world. Probably similar. AWS is expensive. So Bezos would have to have Trump annex Canada before he'd be able to put his fingers on us.

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Go and sprinkle the simplest keywords in the thread - Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed - and tell them your experience.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Add links as well, Lemmy onboarding can be very clunky: https://lemmy.world/post/24220536

    Something like

    "Lemmy has 42k monthly active users

    Feel free if you have any questions"

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    • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Archive link: http://archive.today/ztU6A

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    [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Can someone please post the full article in the comments?

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    [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    @spaduf@slrpnk.net idk if you saw my post about this in https://programming.dev/post/24371441

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    [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Social media is a cancer on society.

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