@_elena I just don't get the rage from it like I do with Meta products.
I've been so angry for so long.
Fedi is much calmer, chill, easy to nope out if things do get a bit weird in a way you don't like (just mute that conversation, mute someone for a period, or forever, or block, lots of options!)

Conversation is meaningful.
It's random, niche and nerdy.
Whatever your special interest, you can find it, if you look - there is no algorithm hiding things from us or presenting us with things we should apparently love/hate.

It's so much more.. Real. It's not sanitised or exaggerated for reach and clicks. People just put themselves out there for whatever reason. It's more like when the internet was better (granted not for every marginalised group but nowhere has achieved that yet - we can keep trying!)

And overall it's got more good things like: anti-AI sentiment and critique, no quarter for fascists etc. Again not perfect but, a definite improvement over for-profit socials where you and your life are the product. No one is a preiuxt product here. Just people!

@_elena People are simply just more friendly here on Mastodon. And the absence of algorithms is for me how the internet should be.

@_elena

@_elena what I like about it is that holds within it a precious gem, something you cannot put a price on. The promise of a better world. A hope for the future. It has idealism and the promise of world where we all partake as equals. A public democratic space.

Pur trop je ne peut pas exprimer ça en français (encore).

@_elena well, I've met someone really cool who went twice on a modern art exhibition to get a plushie for my kid on the fediverse.
No algorithms could have done that better than the human chain that brought my desperate call in the big internet void to this amazing person 🥰
Thanks the fediverse !

@_elena Bonjour Elena, voici mon témoignage si cela peut t'aider : https://docs.federated.nexus/docs/55bd75b6-f9c6-4c72-ac33-14dcb9c41c3c/

@_elena ...because we don't suffer the advertising incentives that built the modern internet into a caricature of humanity.

Thanks to the dampening of that, humans can have real interactions in the fediverse. We are all imperfect, but our imperfections are our own rather than magnified and marketed.

We are allowed to be as whole as we can be without some marketing department telling us we are defective in a way that they magically have a product or service for...

@_elena Commercial social media platforms are built for ‘influencer’ engagement and sponsored content - the fedi is not. It’s lack of an global algorithmic feed and global moderation make this type extremely of high-engagement content difficult to achieve. Additionally, the lack of an algorithm ensures even smaller accounts have equal voice to larger ones. This comes at the cost of users having to strictly curate their own feeds through follow requests, instead of passively accepting an algorithmicly generated feed. For people used to other platforms, this model can feel burdensome, initially.

Generally speaking, it is misleading to try to compare the fedi to other social media platforms, like Bsky, X, Threads, etc. These latter platforms are singular in operations, ownership, and moderation. The fedi is best understood as a confederation of different communities (which we call instances). Each community has it’s own unique characteristics, culture, and moderation policies. No community is forced to interact with another but must come to a generalized, and understood, social contract, or face consequences of being ‘defederated’ by one or multiple instances (see various fediblock dramas). While this may create – what appears as a – hodgepodge of content restrictions or moderation policies, it is – in fact – the single most scalable and democratic model for moderation possible. This model does not rely on the exponential growth of a large centralized team or the implementation of questionable AI moderation bots, but requires merely that every new and ongoing instance abide by a general social agreement to participate within the larger fedi community.

@_elena Le Fédivers construit des ponts — entre les humains. Ici, je ne suis ni un utilisateur, ni un point de données, ni une cible marketing. Je suis simplement moi. Et le Fédivers n’a pas été conçu pour le profit, mais pour nous.

It's hard m there's so much good to say about the fediverse...

@_elena the Fediverse allows me to choose what I will see (and why). It feels like a more natural way of social networking than the other platforms.

@_elena

La porte de la Fediverse, c'est une communauté bien à soi, que l'on peut s'approprier à sa façon et selon ses propres besoins sans en déléguer le contrôle à autrui, tout en restant connecté aux autres communautés et à leurs membres, dans le respect des valeurs et des besoins de chacunes et chacuns.

@_elena Le Fediverse est le dernier coin de tranquillité, imperméable au marketing dans un Internet rendu inhospitalier par les Big Tech.

Ce sont nos potagers qu’on cultive et où on se détend entre voisins, là où le reste de la ville est pollué par les publicités et manipulations de Meta et consorts.

@_elena I grew up with Web1.0, a free garden of oddities, trivia, useful bits of tech knowledge, weird and wonderful stuff, which was maybe limited by scant access, and tech-savvy required.

Web2.0 ("AOL") created walled gardens, where sheeple were allowed to see and go only where corporate goons wanted them to. Web3.0 monetized and enshittified that.

The #fediverse is Web1.0+, the freedom to access wonderful stuff, free of corps oversight... now with obscene broadband and storage/processing =D

@_elena what makes fedi special is that it helped me to move away from my big social addiction and showed me that a social media system without ads and algorithm is possible.

@_elena My biggest plus: No Algorithm. That is the main reason why we have really good content here!