The MAGA shift has clarified the social media sh*tstorm for many. As Zuck and Company remove fact-checking and allow Trump to spew on their platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Threads) people are looking for a new ‘democratic’ solution to online communities. Two front-runners have emerged.

BlueSky – a Twitter replacement.

Mastodon – a full-featured social replacement for Facebook. This link will explain it and give you ideas about which server you’d like to start on. You can ALWAYS package up your Mastodon content and move to a different server. The site will explain all this much better than I can.

Both are going to take time to fulfill your connective desire, because unless someone is on the platform their updates will not make it to you. Here’s the strategy.

Establish new social media accounts on Mastodon and Bluesky. Give the addresses of your new platforms on your Facebook, Twitter, Threads, Instagram walls. Don’t make it a big dramatic “I’m leaving” just give the information of where you will be going.

What we need right now.

Less lies. Less marketing and advertising. No AI-generated profiles (as enthusiastically embraced by Zuck’s plans for Facebook). And most importantly, on a platform like Mastodon, your data is not collected or used for advertising purposes. I also suggest you use good privacy and ad-blocking plugins on your browser. Consider leaving the Google Product Universe altogether. (I am not leaving G-Mail just yet, but I have been a DuckDuckGo fan for many years. Might be time to give their Browser a try.)

And, one more lesson I learned in the early days of growing my social media platform: don’t just start friending, connecting with every single account you can. You wind up with conversations that have little relevance to your life or your goals. While it’s tempting to just go for “reach” that’s exactly the vapid horrorscape you can avoid as you migrate to the Fediverse.

Def: The fediverse, short for “federated universe,” is a decentralized social network of independent servers that can communicate and interact with each other using common protocols. In this world, you should own your data. Your Mastodon wall, profile, and posts are NOT MINED FOR DEMOGRAPHIC DATA. And you won’t be looking at fake, ai-generated profiles and bots unless you subscribe or connect with them. Pay attention. Grow slowly, but with intention.

I’m not clear on how I can build my FBverse back on Mastodon, but I’m looking into it.

Where we can find community online in today’s fractured world. I’m in the process of building several “communities” behind websites that already have a focused audience. I want to see if I can entice and build communication spaces for my several groups using my own sites, Mastodon, or some other variation. Years ago, there were several free and formidable community platforms. Perhaps there are even better ones now.

What I know, I need to keep connecting online with my communities of hope, my tribes. Facebook is a burning dumpster fire that has been diluted over the years. Zuck has dealt with PRIVACY issues by disclaiming them and faking the fix. He’s never slowed the sale of your personal demographic data to marketers from all over the world, including many shady and unreliable data partners.

Last idea: perhaps use a data-scraping company to help remove your “profile” from online marketing and database farms. I just paid for a second year of purging from Incogni a company that gives thorough reports about their progress, the requests they’ve made, and the requests they are making. To REMOVE, SUPPRESS, and RESTRICT your personal data from being mined for marketers.

Facebook is the largest leak after Google. Amazon is pretty bad too, but it’s much harder to restrict your Amazon tracking data. My advice there, buy from individual websites rather than Amazon. Don’t feed the Bezos beast in any way, when you can help it.

Social hasn’t been about social or “friend” connections for years. Time to take that back. Especially in a time with privacy, personal rights, and even billionaire intrusions, we the people can be more selective in our online activity and participation. While I generate about 10,000 connections a week from Facebook groups and pages, I am going to start the process of moving my voice to Mastodon, BlueSky, and the several sites I manage, even this one, eventually.

Here are my addresses:

• Mastodon – https://mstdn.social/@jmacofearth
• Bluesky – https://bsky.app/profile/jmacofearth.bsky.social

If you stop by, follow and I’ll follow back.

And several plugins (for Chrome – which I use) to slow the collection of your vital stats.

• Privacy Badger from EFF
• Ad-Block Plus in the Chrome store
• AdNauseam a ad-fooling extension for Chrome that Google disallowed from their extensions depot. But you can still use it.
• Incogni – Not a plugin, but the data removal service I’ve been using. The image at the top of this post is my dashboard.

Note: none of these links are tracked or affiliate marketing promos.

Finally, get involved, engage in whatever you’re passionate about. Then take the data-collection monsters off your list as you can. I will be leaving FB, for now, I’ve killed Threads (no more posts, last post “find me here”) am restricting instagram and have placed a “find me on Mastodon” link. TikTok which I have never been too enthusiastic about, is probably going to be shut down. And get this, the SharkTank billionaire is trying to buy it. They can own corporate social media, but they cannot control all of the web. Join the Fediverse and put your data in “do not share” mode.

– VBadmin