I loved this video that the Daily Show‘s Desi Lydic posted on Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube. Give it a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv-X1E71RGo

Lydic talks about the dizzying changes that are happening in social media these days. Internet users over the last decade have gotten used to a small number of huge social platforms. But political changes, content policy issues, and legal platform shutdowns have upended that formerly stable structure. People can no longer count on their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours all being on the same social networking system, much less news outlets, politicians, and celebrities. So they’re racing around, trying new applications (including, as Lydic notes, the awesome Pixelfed), and seeking a place to be social again.

Why should anyone have to do this? After all, you and I didn’t change our political outlook or our content policies or our legal ownership structure. We have governments and companies changing all around us that interfere with how we can interact with the people that matter most to us. Regardless of how you feel about these changes, why do everyday users have to be the ones to scramble to adapt?

The Fediverse is based on the simple belief that your social connections and your published content are yours. They belong to you. You should get to decide where to set up your home on the social web, based on your own priorities — technical, political, financial, romantic, whatever. And once you have that place on the social web, you can connect to anybody else, on any Fediverse platform, as easily as if they were on your own.

So when your friends are all trying a new Fediverse-enabled app from the app store, you can follow them from your own Fediverse home, see what they’re posting, like, comment, and share. You don’t have to scramble to install yet another application, go through the complicated signup flow, set up your profile, and alert everyone you know about yet another identity you have. You can stay put, keep all your current connections, but still stay connected to your restless friends and bleeding-edge influencers.

And if you get tired of the place you’ve set up your Fediverse home, you can move completely — taking all your social connections (and, soon, all your content) to the new platform you’ve chosen. You won’t have to make a series of announcements, like Lydic does, about all the different places your Internet presence is scattered. It’s handled automatically by the Fediverse platforms. Your followers, family and friends might not even notice the difference.

Social media is fun; we get it. And there’s nothing wrong with trying new apps. Being a pioneer on the cool new platform is invigorating. But if it’s not fun, and you’re feeling the whiplash of multiple platforms rising and falling weekly, please consider setting up your long-term homebase on a Fediverse-enabled platform. You might be surprised how many platforms are already Fediverse-enabled, and more are coming online every day.

@evanprodromou For some reason this post snapped everything into clarity for me.

Ever since the Starr report brought down the hosting web server, I've felt like Usenet was actually the correct architecture for broadcasting things.

The reason I'm attracted to the fediverse is because it feels like UUCP is making a comeback. Many of the other virtues feel like consequences of that architecture.

@neale@teh.entar.net I’m glad to hear that!