In 2014 I bought a Fairphone and joined this forum not only because of climate, environment, extractivism, working conditions and e-waste, but also because I was sick of megacorporations like Apple getting away with everything (like “suicide nets”).
Since then tech giants only got worse.
Right now it seems that all billionaires that own (social) media platforms are trying to out-evil each other.
But just as Fairphone offers an alternative to evil mobile phone companies, the Fediverse is an alternative to evil social media.
And in case you didn’t know, there is an instance for Fairphoners: https://social.fairphone.community
You can create an account there and communicate with almost the entire fediverse. social.fairphone.community is a Mastodon (microblogging) server, but the Fediverse also consists of Pixelfed (the ethical Instagram alternative that Meta is afraid of, so they don’t allow posts linking to Pixelfed servers), PeerTube (the reason why nobody should use YouTube anymore), lemmy (ethical reddit), Friendica (ethical Facebook), WriteFreely (ethical Blogger), Owncast (ethical Twitch), Loops (ethical TikTok), Funkwhale (ethical Spotify), Bookwyrm (ethical Goodreads), Mobilizon, Misskey, Pleroma, GoToSocial, Hubzilla, GNU Social, (streams); SocialHome, diaspora*, Castopod, reel2bits, Gancio, Sharkey, Iceshrimp, FoundKey, GlitchSoc, Akkoma, Bonfire and many many many more.
With the number of mental health issues and social anxiety disorders I suspect it causes, I question whether there is any such thing as ethical social media, but that debate has more to do with human psychology (I.E. has social media caused an increase in narcissism) than it has to do with corporate ethics.
Thank you for highlighting the suicide nets issue; I hadn’t heard of that. I tend to avoid newsmedia in general, as it makes me feel helpless and depressed, and I barely go online anymore. Whenever I do, I tend to quickly see something that verifies my decision.
My reason for replying is that I’m currently working on a fictional novel that holds a strong stance against corporations, social media, hierarchies, and practically all current forms of civic “leadership”. As depressing as all that sounds, I aim to make this novel a positive statement about the importance of maintaining individuality in an increasingly homogenised world, as it seems to me that it’s only by collectivising independent thought that we as a global society have a cat in hell’s chance of avoiding the shady future we’re heading towards.
So after that mouthful of a statement, I’m asking people what they think can be done to combat the megolithic powers that be.
Thanks for pointing out all these fascinating alternative services and platforms. However, I’m at a loss how to move the masses there and away from the “evil” commercial platforms, short of having our governments force them one way or another, which is not what we want in liberal western countries.
Some years ago there was some backlash against WhatsApp due to the bad privacy / data protection. A number of people I know left WhatsApp or never joined, they use mostly Signal instead. But even then, the majority stayed, some even returned. I’m afraid it takes sth terrible like the russian attack on UA to really change most people’s minds (boycot and sanction Russia in this case). Again, definitely no “solution” anyone wants.
I guess our best hope is that the European Commission and others can regulate and tame the big platforms to some extent, sometime …
Well for starters, all governments and public institutions should have at least an openly accessible micro-blogging service (read: Mastodon, etc). Then private companies, incl. news networks etc., should be encouraged (e.g. by their consumers)… at some point I’d say that the masses will just follow…
Educating the masses about data surveillance, privacy, etc… might help too.
Either way. Those open platforms need our financial support to keep up with those giant corporate serves. That’s where each of us individually could start.
I think the two go hand in hand. Narcissism is not caused by communicating online, but by the perceived need to gain followers, generate clicks and please an algorithm.
The Fediverse has no PR department with loads of money, so moving the masses won’t happen fast. But the Fediverse has grown ever since it exists and will continue to do so, no matter how many corporate platforms pop up and become the place to be for a second or two.
