People fleeing from Twitter are discovering the appeal of federated, decentralized services like Mastodon that put community management back into the hands of the people.

Make the net weird again

Regardless of what direction Twitter goes in, it seems the social networking landscape on the Internet is changing, potentially for the better—starting with just having services that are “social networking” instead of “social media” to begin with.

You don’t need to make drastic moves or jump ship from any services right now, but familiarizing yourself with these decentralized options will only benefit you as things move forward. We can all benefit from a paradigm shift back away from users being the product, and towards gaining control over our online experiences. The internet used to be a fun place full of clubhouses run by people with varying interests, but more recently it’s just been big, monolithic office buildings run by corporations and billionaires. Let’s take the internet back and make the net weird again.