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>Mastodon seems like the alternative if you really hate that kind of setup, but... it doesn't seem to have much traction.

People keep saying this as if the only "success" mastadon can have is by being in everyone's pocket. It's not an SV unicorn startup, it's not trying to buy out some investors. It's doing exactly what it is designed to do: be a user owned platform. Not everyone will want that all the time, and some people will never want that, and that's fine, not everyone spent 24/7 on the forums of the old web either.

We could stop considering "Everyone is using it all the time" as the desired end goal maybe?




for social media though that's a pretty important end goal. If the people I want to follow aren't using it, then I don't want to use it either. It's like with messenger apps - the one that everyone else is using is the one that wins. And if they aren't using it and I am, then part of my use of the platform becomes trying to get the people I want to talk to onto the platform. It's not a silicon valley thing - it's a communications thing. "everyone is using it all the time" was an important end goal for the post office too, and highways and other shared infrastructure with network effects.




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