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The most exciting thing to me about #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse is that they also connect #blogs, #RSS, and #indieweb social mentions to #socialmedia in an open, interoperable way.
Frustrating, though, that mainstream users tend to ignore noncommercial solutions that aren't aggressively trying to attract them, especially when the onboarding experience is so confusing to newbies. Even if our tech platforms are ready for prime time, the human networks are only early adopter types.
The interactions we’re used to having on #socialmedia arose BECAUSE of the affordances of social media — the good ones and the bad ones.
Efforts to envision the NEXT thing take for granted that it needs to look like the CURRENT thing, ignoring how we socialized online BEFORE ~2008 when social stormed into all our lives. I think we need to rediscover pre-2008 web tech and rebuild a social web that routes around #bigtech.
NYT's Hard Fork and Search Engine podcast started a #mastodon site in the #fediverse called the #forkiverse.
"Can We Build a Better Social Network?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/podcasts/can-we-build-a-better-social-network.html
I've talked before about the inherent limitations of Mastodon. It will never be like the commercial socials it replaces. It's slower, quieter, unlikely to reach your dear Aunt Sally or K-12 classmates. No realtime updates on earthquakes, traffic, etc. No talking with world leaders & celebs.