Comment by lrvick

9 days ago

I abandoned my 5k follower Twitter account for Mastodon a few years ago and 1700 people followed me there. I expect out of the 5k Twitter followers most of them are bots, so I probably lost nothing.

The secret to making alternative platforms work, is actually engaging with them and pretending the toxic platforms you hate no longer exist.

I am a bay area serial founder, with no Twitter, Meta, Google, Apple, or any such other centralized surveillance capitalism bullshit. I do not even have a Signal account as centralization is fundamentally incompatible with freedom and privacy in my eyes. Never gets in my way of doing anything I want to do or talking to anyone I want to talk to.

People sure do like to make excuses on why they still -must- use those platforms even though they do not -want- to. Absolutely never let a platform hold you hostage. Let no one own you if you want freedom.

The smartest people I have ever interacted with are on platforms like IRC, Matrix, and Mastodon. I would rather build a social graph of thousands of people that also really value freedom over thousands of people that make excuses to stay trapped in walled gardens any day.

9 comments

lrvick

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dofm  9 days ago

> People sure do like to make excuses on why they still -must- use those platforms even though they do not -want- to.

They are not always excuses and you really should understand that if you have tech industry experience.

Try having a small business in some niches and doing so without Facebook.

  • lrvick  9 days ago

    I cannot think of a niche where one could not be successful without Facebook, but by all means present a specific example.

    • dofm  8 days ago

      You can always hypothesise success without Facebook because if it didn't exist, people would find alternatives.

      But it does exist, and in any town or city there are dozens of people running microbusinesses in competitive niches that rely on word of mouth and recommendation which is largely sustained through Facebook comments, "I'll message you!" and tagging in posts and photos.

      Anyone in hustle culture — odd job/handymen, mobile hairdressers/beauticians/nail technicians, day workers, gardeners, plumbers, event photographers; Facebook is unfortunately crucial to keeping the doors open.

      All of these people could have websites, but people don't browse websites. They could run ads in newspapers, but people don't look at those. And google is dead for stuff like this, listings and trade directories are not much good either.

      At the lowest level of freelance income, Facebook is basically indispensible because it is the only social network with a regional basis and solid local group mechanisms, and because your both your customers and competitors are there. It probably sustains tens of millions of such workers.

      This is where the tension lies. For sure I wish Facebook would shrink and that the web was healthier and people would understand the damage it can do, but "just don't use it" is not advice that works for millions of people.

      It is Facebook that needs to change, through slow attrition of engagement with bait content and scam ads.

      3 replies →

stubish  9 days ago

> and pretending the toxic platforms you hate no longer exist

Thank you. One reason I spend more time on my Mastodon feed than my Bluesky feed is there are fewer people there complaining about Twitter. Less rage and complaining in general.