If you listen to any of my podcasts, you probably know that I don't really like social media. It's a necessary evil.
I think a big part of that loathing is the race to the bottom. The worst content goes straight to the top, which means our culture goes straight to the bottom.
Most have ineffective monitoring to prevent hate speech as well. So again, straight to the bottom.
The feeds are also posted by popularity, not by what's happening now. It's a corporate algorithm to make you stay longer on their network so they can advertise to you.
That's not why I signed up.
I signed up to communicate with friends and family. I signed up to have good, positive communications. I also hoped to share news and information for people interested in my music.
But the Algorithm prevents that from happening.
During the mass Twitter migration that started this week, I was introduced to Mastodon. You can find and follow me @celtfather here:
It's different because it is an open source network. No corporation owns it. Each server is unique and, as I understand it, has safety guards against hate speech.
I signed up to give it a shot.
Seth Godin posted his thoughts on Mastodon here.
Will it be a race to the bottom? I don't know.
Will I use it more than I use other networks (once it is better populated)? I don't know.
I tried out one lame network months ago and it was a no go for me. That may be the case again. But if nothing else, I love the concept.
And…
I'm hopeful.
I'd love for you to follow me on Mastodon. We can try it out together and maybe improve the conversations that we all hoped for on Facebook and Twitter.
