ellen juniper ✅I want to thank @hermeslispegistus for bringing up the very valid issue that Mastodon's burgeoning popularity may damage the federated system. The responsible way forward is to promote federation in every way that we can.
Other options worth considering are the ones that @Gargron mentioned in his welcome post on Medium, http://icosahedron.website and http://social.tchncs.de
I know there's a temptation to believe in the idea that there can be one simple, easy-to-explain alternative to Twitter that works for *everyone*, but the truth is there literally can't be.
Federation is, in a way, a socialist approach to dismantling the control that Facebook and Twitter have over the way people communicate online. It can be hard to explain, but I truly believe we'll develop the language quickly enough. We figured out how to explain what the fuck a social network even *is* in the first place, after all, we can do this too.
I feel pretty strongly about Mastodon and the things it does right, but I'm going to be the first person to say that it's not going to work for everybody. The beauty of federation is that it doesn't have to.
.@bleak brings up a really good point, which is that not everyone has the resources or ability to roll their own instance. That's why I think tools like http://social.guhnoo.org are worth spreading, as they make navigating pre-existing instances significantly easier.
Another thing worth mentioning in all this is that my fundamental support of this system is very much rooted in my belief that the world needs publicly owned social networks as much as it once needed publicly owned mail and still needs publicly owned ISPs.
The reason why I think federation is fundamentally socialist is that it has the potential to radically shift the way communication is controlled, giving people the potential ability to manage online communications at an individual and community level.
While I don't necessarily have the ability to do do this, there is now a theoretical possibility that I can create a system of communication that only intends to conclude those within my personal community (say, my house, or my city, or my state) while still having a connection to a larger system. That's pretty hecking cool.
With that I'm going to bring an end this already-too-long thread but thanks for listening. Please continue to promote the system, whether that means getting people on Mastodon or encouraging folks to find their own little node that works for them. This system is good for all of us.
I went ahead and transcribed that thread in a way that's much easier to read http://www.ellen.zone/post/159086280344/on-federated-social-networks-and-socialism