Big Tech designed their platforms to keep you trapped.
YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok aren't neutral spaces. They're businesses built on capturing your attention and data. Their algorithms, notification systems, and content policies all serve one purpose: keeping you engaged on their terms. And their terms alone. There's no freedom
I remember reading a book that talked about public spaces and how we often think of malls as public spaces, but they have so many restrictions and ulterior motives that it doesn’t really hold.
They’re essentially the irl equivalent of centralised social media platforms. I hope once the fediverse really takes off, we can have ‘official’ platforms/instances that are run by governments that federate only to other ‘official’ ones. That seems like a better way to reach people, instead of Xitter.
It is incredibly frustrating to see for example Ursula Von der Leyen preaching “EU STRONG” stuff on fucking shitter. Really? This is your way of showing how strong the EU is and we shouldn’t or can’t rely on USA? By posting your I’m strong message on the precise platform the US chief nazification officer owns? FFS.
If all EU governments together decide to ditch shitter and move to mastodon instances, media follows. It’s a pretty cheap measure to implement, too.
Hard agree! I do think fediverse platforms are perfect for public entities to disseminate information.
I’m US based so my example is say a county. They already have the IT infrastructure and staff. Make an instance for the county and a community for each department.
The road department can post road closures and upcoming traffic diversions. The parks department can promote events, etc.
These type of instances can just disable comments. They are read-only so moderation is not needed.
It’s trivial from a resource perspective and even easier than updating a website.