I don’t mean to sound like an old codger when I start saying things that start with “back in my day,” yet here we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in my day, when the web was young, the “social” part of the Internet was very <\/em>decentralized: there were newsgroups, forums, and eventually blogs, none of which were controlled by any one single entity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually though, Facebook came onto the scene and micro-blogging took off in popularity, which morphed into the social web we know (or knew) today. Centralization had its benefits: everyone was in one place, so it was easy to find people, hear people, and talk with people. It was like a big party, with everyone in the same giant room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But just like parties, the era of centralized social media has to eventually end – and in many ways, that end has happened (or is happening). This is probably for the best – like a party that has gone on too long, centralized social media has over-stayed its welcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why, although I’m sure Bluesky is a nice platform, I advocate so strongly for Mastodon (and for the Fediverse in general) and why I still post here on my own blog. It is dangerous for so much of our socialization to be controlled by so few people – but it does not help to have our metaphorical party split up into people in separate houses, no longer able to communicate… instead, the ideal is for our metaphorical party to split into different rooms, with doors between them that can be opened and closed as needed. You can still hear what is happening, but if the discussion becomes heated or unpleasant, you can just… close the door, and if people around you start hassling you, you can walk into a different room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the ideal, anyway, but we’re not there yet – though I’d like to think we’re heading there. In my mind, every college\/university should start its own Mastodon instance and give every student and faculty member an account, in the same way that back in my day (there’s that phrase again) every student and faculty member got an email account. Likewise, organizations and governments should set up their own Mastodon instances as well – there’s no need for a blue check mark to verify an account when the account is literally hosted under the domain name of the organization\/government, after all! <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you haven’t given Mastodon a try, I strongly encourage you to – especially in this day and age. If you provide tech policy for an organization, university, or government agency, I strongly encourage you to advocate for setting up a Mastodon instance – at least for official communication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (This way, I can stop using the phrase “back in my day” when talking about social media!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wherein I unironically use the phrase “back in my day” to talk about social media. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[203,199],"tags":[35,473,492],"class_list":["post-6207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-technology","category-my-opinion","tag-internet","tag-social-media","tag-technology-2","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-1C7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1101,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/05\/08\/online-identity-anonymity\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":0},"title":"Online Identity\/Anonymity","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This story over on Slashdot about how the Washington Post's online executive editor Jim Brady is arguing against anonymity sparked quite a lively little debate. The problem isn't really anonymity - it's identity. They don't want to know who a particular person is, they just want to somehow stop that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "society"","block_context":{"text":"society","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/society\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5934,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2022\/11\/24\/mastodon-almost-but-not-quite\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":1},"title":"Mastodon – Almost, but Not Quite","author":"Keith Survell","date":"November 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I really wanted to like Mastodon - but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be using it, and I'll tell you why. If you're not familiar, here's the quick version of \"what is Mastodon?\" Mastodon is a decentralized social network, built upon the ActivityPub protocol and the idea of a \"Fediverse.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5972,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2022\/12\/14\/problems-remain-with-mastodon\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":2},"title":"Problems remain with Mastodon","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I'm talking about Mastodon again. After the last installment of my Mastodon Saga - where I found that it wasn't just a database issue that erased my account, but rather a RAID failure - I held out hope that my account and prior posts (and most importantly, follower lists)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":572,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/07\/15\/more-unfounded-regulation-groan\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":3},"title":"More Unfounded Regulation (*groan*)","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"First it was a fear of using cell phones on planes. Now it's a fear of using broadband Internet on planes. This is just silly on so many levels that it's hard to decide where to begin.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1083,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/04\/24\/comcastic-support\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":4},"title":"Comcastic “Support?”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble. My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong. I saw right away that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3509,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2011\/09\/12\/the-evolution-of-starkeith-net\/","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":5},"title":"The Evolution of StarKeith.net","author":"Keith Survell","date":"September 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking back at the history of StarKeith.net.","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2011\/09\/starkeith.net-november-2001-300x166.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6207"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6210,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207\/revisions\/6210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}