Are we awake yet? Are we finally coming to our senses regarding social media? Is it crystal clear yet that we have created our generation\u2019s Walmart and it\u2019s time to burn it down? Are you ready to take action and destroy the empire of capitalist billionaires that are on the brink of taking every one of our posts and uploads and feeding artificial intelligence machines to create the next generation of content? We have a golden opportunity to shut that down and take back our identities and our privacy and the answer is a collection of federated social properties that are all mostly non-profit foundations with open source indie web management teams who support data portability, RSS, open standards and are friendly to the web and with each other.<\/p>\n
We have to get proactive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have to fight back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have to convince our parents to join federated social networks.<\/p>\n
GASP<\/p>\n
Yep, we gotta do it. You have to install PixelFed and Mastodon on your parents\u2019 iPhones and you may have to follow Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan accounts because that\u2019s the kind of people your parents are into (mine are) and you have to show them that it\u2019s totally safe and chill outside of Instagram and Facebook. That there are people just like them swapping recipes and “owning the libs” on other networks and there are even federated servers that are more pro-free-speech than Truth Social or X and it\u2019s all a click away with a global server feed of people that might make them laugh and share stories of the day and memes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You have to show your parents that they do belong somewhere that isn\u2019t a property owned by Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. They have a home elsewhere on the open web and many of these servers are completely free to join and the apps are free and they can just post away and go wild!<\/p>\n
If you left Facebook and Twitter like I did back in 2011, congrats. Congrats. You were a total weirdo, but your time has come! If you left the networks in 2016, yeah, that was pretty smart, and I\u2019m proud of you. If you left in 2020 after the age of AI and machine learning and censorship showed you just how stupid it was to spend all day on someone else\u2019s server posting things that might be deleted and seeing every other post as an advertisement, yeah, you were really smart to leave them, but honestly, a little late.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re still feeding these networks in 2025 with people who are literally worth half-a-trillion dollars running the show and outright promising that they\u2019re going to:<\/p>\n
You\u2019re completely lost.<\/p>\n
The truth is this: social media is a drug. You will have fewer likes, favorites, replies, and reposts when you leave Instagram and join a federated network. It will be just like using social media 10-15 years ago, but that\u2019s okay. You\u2019ve become addicted to the caffeine drip of social media, and it\u2019s okay to have less engagement. I\u2019m using Micro.blog, and I\u2019ll never know how many people follow my RSS feed or my federated posts. I don\u2019t have a follower count. I do get replies, and that\u2019s what matters\u2026conversations.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also going to be okay to suffer a bit by having to text someone who doesn\u2019t use Mastodon and may have missed the news that you just had a baby. You might have to call them. My parents use Facebook, and I haven\u2019t since 2011. I have to send them text messages or call them when things happen to me. It\u2019s okay. They don\u2019t mind, and they like hearing from me. My dad says he still shares things with me on Facebook despite knowing I don\u2019t use it. He also will text me Facebook links that I can\u2019t open\u2026that\u2019s okay too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I might have better luck just getting them to join a social network that federates with Mastodon? RIGHT?!?!?!<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
The nerds are using federated social networks. No one else is using this technology, and as much as I loved using Twitter in 2007 when it was just 100,000 nerds and a few weird celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and MC Hammer, Twitter never would have lasted if not for the masses. Federated social media needs to succeed to bring down the social networks. The network effects that have made Musk and Zuckerberg so insanely rich are going to continue perpetuating until we convince everyone we know to leave these networks and join a federated space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you do to start. Just send them to https:\/\/mastodon.social\/explore and have them create an account and download the official Mastodon client and maybe follow a few topics or creators that align with their interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then you engage with them on those networks, but when they click on your profile and see there\u2019s more to it and you don\u2019t use Mastodon.social, you can then tell them how your server is linked to theirs through a handshake. Use Facebook as an example; say to your dad, \u201cYou know how you can\u2019t send an email to someone on Facebook and have to use Messenger? Well, with Federation, you can\u201d and this might get them excited. They might join Micro.blog, Pixelfed, and PeerTube or Lemmy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not going to be easy, but you can maybe challenge your family to do a dry-January from the top 3 social networks and see if they can get their fill by just using federated networks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My wife today told me she\u2019s thinking of deleting Facebook and TikTok. I hope she does, and I look forward to having her like my posts from Micro.blog while she\u2019s browsing Mastodon. Every single person needs to invite 10 friends to a federated network, and that\u2019s how this grows. It\u2019s always a little lame to bring your parents to the new hotness, but you\u2019re doing them a favor, and it\u2019s the only way we\u2019re going to stop these multi-billionaire assholes from taking over our world (and neighboring worlds).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are we awake yet? Are we finally coming to our senses regarding social media? Is it crystal clear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-technology","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-3f8","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12514,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/02\/14\/okay-micro-blog-is-really-freaking-awesome\/","url_meta":{"origin":12470,"position":0},"title":"Okay, Micro.blog is really freaking awesome!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"February 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I joined Micro.blog many years ago around the time Manton Reece announced public access to the site following a successful crowdfunding campaign but I never used it. Micro.blog arrived around the time Mastodon and the concept of Federation came around but it took years for these networks to see resurgence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12449,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/01\/14\/my-relationship-with-micro-blogging-and-its-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":12470,"position":1},"title":"My Relationship with Micro Blogging and Its Future","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I joined Twitter back in 2006 and until 2010, had tweeted about 20,000 times a year before closing my account. Deleting Twitter and Facebook in 2011 are still some of my proudest technological decisions I\u2019ve made because well..history has certainly reinforced why. 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