Still better than Twitter, but let's be honest

Yes, you can self-host it, but the problem is the cost. The blog explains it very clearly.

The CIA didn't make SELinux. Not sure where you got that from.

It was the NSA lol

Let us know how it goes, really curious to see how much an enthusiast can self-host!

So give me a Fediverse Twitter alternative that's actually a drop-in replacement for Twitter the way Bluesky is and that is (and this is by far the most important factor) as easy to sign up for as Bluesky is. People aren't leaving Twitter because it's "corporate" or "enshittified", they're leaving because it's the proverbial Nazi bar and they want to jump through as few hoops as possible to get where they want to go. Which is Twitter, minus the Nazi in charge and his followers.

The value of social media is 100% in who's on it. Vast majority of people neither know nor care what the fediverse is. They just know a lot of people who don't suck are moving to bluesky.

Honestly, I feel the same way about Reddit and Lemmy. The developers are fascists who think liking Stalin makes them left-wing.

That's like saying food is bad. Most of society might be eating trash fast food with zero nutritional value, but that doesn't mean a healthy diet isn't possible.

I would posit that the fact I can converse with anyone anywhere at any time, makes the world a more connected and potentially peaceful place.

In fact I'd go so far as to argue, that thanks to the internet and social media, we are closer to global consensus as a species than ever before, in history.

Yeah, mostly because for a lot of human existence, we straight up didn't know what was happening even a couple hundred miles away.

But now we do. THAT IS GOOD. And that applies to any thought, event, or experience, be it a natural disaster or the latest chapter of a furry fanfic.

It used to be that people only formed communities where geographic proximity allowed for it. Social media has the potential to remove that limitation.

Does that come with downsides? Yes, but only if we let it. And I wouldn't even say that the immediately obvius downsides are the most pressing ones, not right now.

The most pressing issue with mainstream social media, is the fact it needs to make money, without its actual users being the customers. Instead of connecting people that wouldn't otherwise have crossed paths, or maintaining connections that would have otherwise broken, commercial social media maximizes engagement, which coincides with maximizing critical apathy, radicalization, and moral outrage.

Algorithms impose artificial forces that act on human social behaviour. A really big one is that people are a lot less likely to form communities online with people they don't already agree with about most things.

That has never been true in reality. People absolutely do come together and overcome differences. Reality often requires it. People who live or work together used to HAVE to figure it out, or go mad. Social media could be imposing that requirement globally.

Instead, because the effort required is a turn-off, commercial social media platforms are designed to not just let people avoid it, but to encourage them to do so.

We may be closer to global consensus than we have ever been before, but some of the systems we have built to supposedly facilitate communication, are actively taking us further away from it. But that's not inherent in how social media works. It's because of how it's been designed.

Engaging with society for real, takes effort, and a lot of it. Every piece of difference between how you personally view the world, and how everyone else does, tires you. You have to constantly do mental and emotional work, in order to comprehend the people you are engaging with. When actually doing that, no one can spend all day online. It tires you out, even as you enjoy the exchange of thought.

But since that doesn't make maximum money, who cares about connecting people across the world and facilitating mutual understanding!? Here's a post that confirms what you already think about that other political party, that other state, and that other country, and those other people! Here's two dozen more! Here's content you didn't even know about, and that is really a nothingburger, but which our algorithm has determined will flame up your feelings like a second coming of Hitler!!!