dariohudon

What this article is about... When it first started, social media was called social networking and its goal was connecting people, then something happened and we ended up with social media instead. Yet here we are, 15yrs later, back where we started in Mastodon. Why is this a great second chance?

Table of Contents 2. What Social Media was supposed to be and what it became 3. What's Decentralization? 4. Where we are now?

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A few days ago I came across this article, which spoke primarily about the death of social media but also touched on the history of social networking and what its grande aspirations were. I remember that dream and I'm sure many of you do too.

We were going to all be connected. Our ideas were going to flourish. It was an incredibly exciting time but then something happened. The timeline changed ever so slowly and suddenly we were at each other's throats, angry, ridiculing, stressed when we saw a reply to a post or comment we made. We were so far from that initial excitement, so what happened?

Since joining Mastodon I’ve been pondering this, especially since it 'feels' different here — I'm sure you've felt it as well.

Social Media vs Social Networking

So what became of the dream of connecting everyone? It seems that the ever hungry need for business growth, from quarterly profits and shareholder pressure — the apparent singular driver of innovation for some — did what it did best, it moved forward with no destination save onwards & upwards in mind.

We moved from social networking, where conversations & connecting to one another were the raison d’être, to social media, where advertisers were connected to us. It became about consumption, broadcasting

In business, every problem becomes an opportunity to build a solution, so the problems that arose within social media weren't seen as a step back, they were part of the forward momentum that is innovation. We don’t have end-goals for products, we have KPIs and we never ask, ‘Is this enough?’.

I say this because social media had some great ideas, brilliant ways to express ourselves but as the great Dr. Ian Malcolm once said…

All this to say that when I came across Mastodon it became immediately apparent that THIS was the timeline that never forked and became the final form that is now social media. This is where social networking maintained its focus on connecting people.

So how did social networking become social media? A myriad of reasons but I’m going place the majority into one bucket, something called decentralization.

What's Decentralization?

Since moving to Mastodon, you've no doubt heard of terms like 'fediverse' and 'federation', and found it quite different that you had to choose a community to join rather than Mastodon as a whole.

The idea behind decentralization is that no one individual, company, or server controls Mastodon as a service. This means no egotistical billionaire can suddenly start imposing their own ideas that negatively affect a portion of users. Instead, if an instance (a Mastodon community/ server) decided to act in such a way, they can be de-federated ie. access to the rest of us would be cutoff.

This means the power of the community, of access, belongs to those who invest time into it.

Now, this isn't the first time the idea of people having control over their own fate rather than one entity has proven beneficial. The word decentralization hasn’t seen itself in the spotlight since we pirated .mp3's on Limewire, but here we are again.

Remember when there was a distribution problem within music? Here's a quick synopsis:

• Access to music was limited to physical mediums like cd's even when technology was reaching a place where innovating for streaming was becoming capable.
• The industry wasn't moving fast enough because the statue quo was making good money — why fix what ain't broke?
• What was broke however, was the lopsided profit gain that took more than it gave to smaller artists.
• Piracy wasn't about theft so much as it was a distribution problem. Access.
• People started pirating.
• The music industry kicked and screamed and eventually started innovating to support the request.
• Music piracy reduced drastically once streaming (access) became available to everyone

Decentralization forced both internal and external innovation. This helped usher in what we have now – streaming services.

The bullet points above answer the question, ‘What happens when innovation comes from people and rather than business?', and the answer is... innovation that benefits us. Truth is though, we need both to work together but we also need an end-goal. We need to say, ‘Is this enough?’, but quarterly profits & shareholders don’t allow for that kind of thinking.

Business has a singular goal, build as high as possible.

Where we are

So here we are, on Mastodon, 15yrs before social media impacts our elections, resurges nazism, causes mental health issues, and has us forgetting why we invented it.

Mastodon is the timeline that let people drive at their pace, slower and with intention. It's the timeline that didn't get corrupted by ads. The timeline that didn't have an algorithm bait us with anger and divide.

That's why it 'feels' different here.

To close this off, I want to say thank you to the Mastodon community.

As I looked inward over the past two years as time slowed for many of us, the realization that I wanted something other than a blind upwards trajectory became clear. To enjoy the human experience with kindness & curiosity rather than anger & divide became a part of my own raison d’être — to seek out common people, organization, and innovation.

I’m sure this space isn’t perfect but it feels like the hope we had 15yrs ago. Enjoy!