Fedi First — polarhive

Wait? What’s wrong with Twitter? YouTube or XYZ platform?

These apps are centralized, are funded by advertiser whims. Need non-free software to run. Hard to scale or port. Unnecessary walled-gardens that keep normal users who don’t have an account — out. I don’t like centralized social media anymore. I think it isn’t worth my time in the long run. I switched to something called the fediverse which I covered in my last blog post. I want more people on the fediverse, at least the ones using centralized social media. So here’s my plan:

I will post content to PeerTube a week or two before it goes to YouTube, post to Mastodon and use IFTTT to auto-fetch it’s RSS feed & not look back on Twitter. I will post content to the decentralized fediverse first; before it airs on centralized social-media platforms. I will technically reboost-it (across multiple platforms) and aim for – organic growth, not to please one platform’s algorithm.

It siphons the user previously trapped in proprietary, algo-driven, legacy platform into the fediverse

Another way to think about it: The only reason to be on YouTube or some proprietary service is to get everyone to join the fediverse and discover alternate platforms through that account. In the centralized world: Facebook, Twitter and Google are the instances that we-avoid. These mega villages hosted by Google, Facebook — don’t allow federation. I can’t follow people on Instagram using my Twitter account. Likewise, I can’t “like” a YouTube video from my Instagram or Twitter feeds. This is the way centralized platforms are designed and they have no plans on adopting open-protocols.

UPD: Here’s how I use my phone now

No more social media apps on my phone now. Not even YouTube. I charge my phone once or twice a week and leave it on doze, unless I need to call someone.

P.S. Sometimes these platforms don’t like people leaving.

Look at the 3rd screenshot: I got back my account, after sending an email to Twitter support. Wait for 2-3 months and now I think nothing much is going to happen. Twitter is much more—bloated. They got rid of their JavaScript free web-client. So I’m not going to continue using Twitter. Not even for cross-posts.

YouTube turned on ads for everyone

Centralized social media is often a ground for Surveillance Capitalism. For Google, YouTube’s primary goal is to sell – your attention to advertisers.

“Facebook simply cannot give anyone the power to do anything:

Because that power will always, ultimately, reside in Facebook itself, which controls both the software, the servers and the moderation policies. No, the future of social media must be federation. The ultimate power is in giving people the ability to create their own spaces, their own communities, to modify the software as they see fit, but without sacrificing the ability of people from different communities to interact with each other. Of course, not every end user is interested in running their own little social network — just like every citizen isn’t interested in running their own little country.”

*“Facebook is essentially running a payola scam where you have to pay them if you want your own fans to see your content. If you run a large publishing company and you make a big piece of content that you feel proud of, you put it up on Facebook. From there, their algorithm takes over, with no transparency. So, not only is the website not getting ad revenue they used to get, they have to pay Facebook to push it out to their own subscribers.

These excerpts are taken from Mastodon’s, blog which inspired me to write today’s post.

As a content-creator: you should be under control

Please your audience, not an algorithm, which is again, proprietary. To ensure your content is available in a chronological, non algorithmic feed. For the user it would mean, getting actual feeds of content that they subscribed to. Less fake news, more privacy, sovereignty and portability.

People are kinder, have fun and everyone has a different experience on their own terms compared to an an algo driven hate fueled social network. My prediction -> And any non-federating social network will inevitably fail in a free-market.