There is a lot of disdain here on #Mastodon and the #Fediverse for those who have chosen to stay on #X / #Twitter and other social media platforms. And I think that this is not helpful.

I mean, sure, in the case of governments, political leaders, and major news organizations, disdain away. But many activists and small-time business owners depend on having a large reach and good networking for their activities, and this reach might simply not be feasible on the Fediverse - especially if their primary focus is on a demographic underrepresented around here (as the Fediverse skews heavily towards white Europeans and North Americans).

Hating on these people accomplishes nothing useful - and worse, it contributes to the Fediverse’s well-deserved reputation for snobbery, which has driven a lot of people away.

So instead try empathy. Understand why such people make the choice to stay on other social media platforms, despite their problems. And instead of berating them for it, emphasize that these platforms will almost certainly get worse over time, due to the Enshittification cycle that all tech businesses touched by Silicon Valley venture capitalists must inevitably go through.

Suggest that developing a Fediverse presence is a useful “Plan B” for their social media efforts - and that among social media platforms, the Fediverse alone has the potential to develop into something better over time.

  • Broken_Monitor@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The fear of moving away from a platform or program because it has a large user base stagnates us and leaves us at the mercy of them. This leads us to a reliance on a single focal point for any given use case, and when that fails or does something terrible we will have nowhere else to turn. It is imperative that we have a distribution of programs and platforms for technologies that our society relies upon. The only way this happens is if we use less popular ones and move away from those who try to exploit us. It may have difficulties and growing pains in doing so, but the long term benefits far outweigh the short term needs that so many are prioritizing.