Do you trust these guys?
Over the past few days, several media articles have detailed the exodus of social media users from Twitter/X. Writers in the New York Times and Slate have now cited Bluesky as the latest beneficiary.
Unlike Threads, its fellow pretender to Twitter dominance, Bluesky is presented as a news-friendly service. While Bluesky might be open to news, and lack a billionaire bent on having his weird brain droppings bubbled to the top of every feed, should you be migrating to this alternative? It might be a good moment to pause and consider what truly ails social media.
Social Media - The Promise
Cast your mind back a few decades to the emergence of Facebook and Twitter. There was much talk of a new virtual public square. In the rush to establish a presence on these bright, shiny new internet services, few paused to consider the implications of these networks' supposedly "free" nature. With their American genesis and an initial user base conditioned to the acceptance of ad-supported services pioneered by radio and television broadcasters, some anticipated that a similar model would emerge.
Social Media - The Reality
Two decades later, many are wiser. Sobering lessons about engagement algorithms (The Social Dilemma) and the harvest of personal data by sinister third parties (Cambridge Analytica) have revealed the far darker side of social media services that positioned themselves as public forums. Until two years ago, with Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter/X, few considered the ownership issue of social media networks and how they might be acquired and used to promulgate a particular political viewpoint. We can argue about how influential Musk's use of Twitter/X was in securing the White House for a second Trump administration, but we cannot assert that it was negligible.
Social Media - The Ownership Issue
Ownership must be considered when moving to a new social media service. While the current owners of Bluesky might be operating with the most benign of intentions, there is no assurance that will continue to be the case. Privately held companies are bought, sold, and traded by individuals, often with opaque and shadowy intentions. And so we must ask, can your social media network be bought and sold?
Decentralized Social Media
If the public square aspect of social media is an important consideration, using a decentralized service is essential. Mastodon is the best-known of these options and is blessedly free of ads and algorithms. Having been conditioned over the last few decades to programmatic feeds, many are discomfited by the lack of emotive content being pushed at them to increase their engagement. It takes a while to get used to the absence of feverish outrage. More importantly, some random billionaire cannot wander in and take the place over with bucketloads of cash. Why not? The answer lies in the word decentralization. Social media networks like Mastodon are comprised of individual servers or 'instances'. These instances are then connected or 'federated' to create a supernetwork. Each of these instances is independently controlled, and there are thousands of them. Some are comprised of just a few individuals; many are far larger. The diversity of instances effectively blocks billionaire takeovers.
So, a crucial choice must be made: Do you want to subject yourself to "oligopomedia" with its opaque algorithms, shadowy privacy practices, and billionaire pronouncements? I've made my choice; you can find my profile on Mastodon: Martin Nutty. I look forward to seeing you there in a Musk-Zuckerberg-free space.
