Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
Why do I bother with Mastodon and even make it my main social media presence?
It's essentially a combination of a believe in grassroots community building, being in control of your own data and a wager on the future of social media.
Let me explain in a thread, of course here on Mastodon 🧵
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
But first I'll start with a negative claim: Twitter is in a death spiral. This has been clear ever since Musk took over the platform. Most former Twitter staff has been fired, Musk has been encouraging a far right climate under the guise of 'free speech', is using his platform to directly influence US politics by backing Trump (if you're a liberal, why the hell are you paying for X?) and, perhaps most importantly, advertisers are moving away from the platform in droves.
Ad revenue is expected to decline to $2 billion for 2024, this is less than half compared to 2021 and is still declining. Trump has been in a frenzy over this, now sueing advertisers for audacity of withholding him money. You can't this shit up.
A death spiral.
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/x-expects-2-billion-in-ad-revenue-this-year (behind a paywall)
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
Mastodon in comparison is far from perfect too, be it for very different reasons. Lacking billions in investment money, this open source project has always been an underdog. It lacks basic features like quote posting, the default UI is pretty ugly, and development is slow with a mostly volunteer developer base.
There are better open source solutions, but for whatever reason Mastodon became the most popular in the 'fediverse'. This term encapsulates both a protocol and an idea.
The protocol is ActivityPub, a web standard (by the W3C) for different services talking to one another. This and the fact it is open source makes a crucial difference from the many Twitter alternatives that have come and gone over the years.
A social network can only succeed by establishing a network effect: you join it and stay on it because you want to follow the people that are on the network. For me, I've been struggling in leaving Twitter (yeah, fuck 'X') as the (nuclear) energy community is mainly on there. Some have created a Mastodon account, like @Angelica, but haven't maintained a presence and just returned to Twitter where they have their biggest audience. I don't blame them. For as long as Twitter exists (see earlier notes on the death spiral though), I can see why people wouldn't want to invest time and energy in establishing a decade old social circle.
This is where ActivityPub shines: Threads of Meta has launched a year ago and, because it builds on an existing Instagram network, can sport hundreds of millions of users. I don't think it's a very special platform and Meta isn't any kind of better alternative to Musk in regarding its users as unwilling sources of income.
But it has been implementing ActivityPub for the past year. Very, very slowly, but still. Every other month or so they announce another 'breakthrough' beta feature in implementing the fediverse. And this is good, as it means that the Mastodon community potentially gets access to a lot more people.
I'm convinced Meta has been doing this for their own interests: the EU has been investigating Meta's dominsnce for a while now and they're moving to an open internet for all users, irrespective of platform. Meta is merely implementing ActivityPub to keep ahead of the game and remain in a position where they can make a first move.
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
ActivityPub enables a wider network though than Mastodon and Threads. First of all, it enabled an open source ecosystem of platforms that clone functionality of the corporate platforms. This is the essence of what makes the 'fediverse'. Imagine if YouTube, Reddit and Twitter users could just 'talk' to eachother, as if it didn't matter where you posted. This is what the fediverse enables you, only the software here is called PeerTube, Lemmy and Mastodon respectively. There are many more open source example offering platforms for podcasts, blogs, music, you name it.
But also established communities are discovering the advantages of ActivityPub. Ever heard of Flipboard? It recently made the jump by integrating ActivityPub into its platform, thereby making themselves transparent to everyone on the network. And then there's Wordpress, that is actively developing its support for ActivityPub, potentially enabling tens of millions of Wordpress sites to be on the Fediverse.
Twitter is an island community, which doesn't 'talk' to other island communities like YouTube or Reddit. In contrast, ActivityPub actually creates a social web, that's centered around its users. This is clearly the way the internet will develop the next few decades with more bigger parties set to implement ActivityPub for their own island community, building bridges.
https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/flipboard-mastodon-federated/
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
Mastodon has given me the option to control my own data and my own social experience. This is clearly in its infancy, but steadily maturing. I run my own Mastodon instance which will be a bridge too far for most people, but I'm open for anyone wanting to setup their own account. I'd love to host the "Nuclear Twitter" community on my instance.
Yes, you'd have to build up a social circle again. But with the promise this is going to be the last time ever. The fediverse isn't going anywhere. It is after all not fueled by corporate greed, with your privacy as their source of profits, but centered around people, funded by people, lived by people.
That is why I'm so adamant to be on Mastodon and why I will eventually close my Twitter account. You'd be wise to build your Mastodon account as well before Twitter makes that choice for you by ceasing to exist.
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