Social ME-dia II
Recently I decided to make some significant changes to my online presence. More directly, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account and a secondary Twitter account. I also locked my primary Twitter account and started to delete posts, likes, followers, and essentially turning it into a lurker account.
Why? Facebook has been an ad-fueled algorithm-powered endless stream of BS for a while. As for Twitter, some billionaire decided to go all in and turn it into an actual dumpster fire. It was already trending towards becoming a hellscape with bros and right-wingers, and this latest event only accelerated that transformation.
I’ve been on Twitter since 2011, so leaving was not an easy decision. Also, where would one go? There are very few options, but I could also not stay.
I had looked at Mastodon some years ago, but the communities were small, and moving to the fediverse was not straightforward. It’s still not trivial, but it’s much easier than it used to be. Or maybe it’s just my perception. Maybe it was never difficult. Maybe it was just me. Who knows?
The big change now, though, is that the fediverse has grown significantly, and I decided to jump in head first. I set up an account on fosstodon.org, and it’s been a great journey ever since.
These days I access Mastodon using the Metatext app on my iOS devices or the browser on my computers. And it works great! And, yes, I deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps from all my devices.
Most importantly, though, my experience interacting with different people and communities on Mastodon has been nothing but positive. And as another bonus, there are no ads, no algorithms pushing promoted content, and no d-bags or bros.
So, where do I go from here? I still have Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Medium accounts, but I am considering deleting some of them. Another exciting change of late is that Tumblr has been purchased by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and they plan to add support for the ActivityPub protocol to Tumblr. This would effectively add Tumblr to the fediverse. Who knows? It may be time to get an account on Tumblr again.
Anyway, I’m very pleased with my move to the fediverse, and I do not miss either Twitter or Facebook. Not at all!
