Mastodon and the old ways

Do you remember the old days? When there was no Facebook nor Twitter? Back when everyone had their own blog and was solely responsible for that? That was not all too long ago you know. Now with Elon Musk having taken over Twitter and his weird and economically bad decisions on that platform we all are seeking a new place to moan about our life.

Well now there is a surge in Mastodon instances. Now Mastodon is nothing new, but it was not well known. But what makes it great is that it brings us back to the segragation of the web we sadly need. We found out that forcing all the people in a centralized social network only promoted hate and made the mass much more susceptible for manipulation by enemy nations. Will this also be a rise in personal blogs again? I really hope so.

I really miss the times we shared urls and people had to actively go to a specific themed website. Having social groups seperated from each other actually enabled us to create real friendships and we created many great things. What Facebook did to us was not very beneficial with creating social experiments on our minds and selling our data. We always warned about it, we warned about the centralized issues these platforms created, we warned about the control their would gain over our lifes. And yet the majority ignored us. Over 20 years of the Kremlin manipulating the social networks and trying to destabalize the west has not even made a dent in the minds of the people. Should we just continue like nothing happened? Or should we walk back a little bit and try a new path?

I am sure that seperated yet federated instances is one way of improving the web. It brings us back to the old blog-like web we loved so much and yet allows us to still connect. There is no free speech without moderation. Letting everybody say whatever they please will result in the infringement of other peoples rights. Every country, every city, every person has their own interpretation of what constitutes as free speech. Everybody is allowed their opinion and everybody is alowed to speak it, but you are no allowed to infringe on other peoples rights and it is up to the place you are at if it constitutes as allowed to be said. Moderating a platform to keep people safe from all sorts of harm is not censorship. No one is silencing that person. They are just saying it in the wrong social group. Just like I can’t just go to a church and scream about the non-existance of god. Like Professor Oak said: “There’s a time and place for everything, but not now [here].”