TLDR: just as eating too much processed foods leads to obesity of the body, consuming too much Big Tech processed social media leads to mental rot.
It would be better to focus on quality ingredients.
What an interesting read! The food analogy instantly made sense to me, I am wondering if other people had the same experience?
What is the point of all this, you may wonder? Well, reading Postman provided a big eureka moment for me - an understanding of why I struggle so much to convince my friends to abandon commercial social media in favor of the Fediverse. Drum roll: the Fediverse may be missing a clear, cohesive narrative.
Technically the Fediverse has everything one would need to enjoy independent social media, away from the surveillance capitalism that powers Big Tech. What has been difficult is finding a story, a simple narrative anyone could follow that would explain WHY the Fediverse is the most empowering, most ethical technological solution out there for social media.
I have come to see the Fediverse as the equivalent of organic, plant based, home-cooked meals and by contrast I see TikTok, Instagram, X, Threads, Snap and other platforms by Big Tech as the equivalent of Big Food – brands like Coca Cola, McDonalds, Nestlé, that promote ultra-processed, highly addictive foods and beverages, contributing to an epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other diet-related diseases.
Thanks for the summary! How is the fediverse against surveillance though? Isn’t it easy to scrape data since it’s all public
Check out the app permissions for the Mastodon app vs its competitors, and you’ll get an idea.
Of course, it’s not the Fediverse as such - Threads is still surveillance capitalism, even if it gains full AP support. And 3rd party Mastodon apps can track as much as they want. But the Fediverse makes it possible, by not depending on returns on investments.
