A little more than a year ago, i joined emacs.ch along with others leaving Twitter. I had tried mastodon before, but bounced off it. I was intrigued by the protocol, but protocols and platforms are not the real draw. It’s the people, not by volume, but the sufficient intersection of interests and practiced art of sharing, commenting and discussion.
The choice of mastodon instance matters to me, because the #emacs community, and its size fit my needs and has a great overlap with the other topics i am interested in, #lisp, #nix and #clojure
Decades ago i got interested in computers because they let me talk to people from all over the place, getting diverse input.. Johnny 5 Alive!
As the AP network grows, we need to remember that its people that build it, run its nodes, interact with us, and share bits of their humanity to make this social network. They are not “users” to count, or to sell or to analyze. Our conversations are not “content” for monetizing, or decorating with ads, or manipulating to drive impressions and clicks. The people running it are not our servants, or our overlords to fight.
The AP network will grow, maybe beyond its own capabilities, and some set of people may be diverted into attention monetization machines, but the social ties can migrate, with help from the tools or simply thru memory and rediscover.
Remember the people, not the followers or likes or boosts, and help each other build, run and use the tools, free software, to control our experience and keep one another at the core of it.
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