Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

Mat Duggan:

I never expected to find my news from strangers on a federated social network that half the internet has never heard of. I never expected a lot of things. But there's something quietly beautiful about a place where people just... share what they know. No brand deals, no engagement metrics, no algorithm nudging you toward rage […] It's the internet I was promised in 1996. It only took thirty years and the complete collapse of American journalism to get here.

The Fediverse is great. When you push it to do things you typically do elsewhere — build a brand, increase engagement, gain a subscription base — everything breaks down. That’s a feature not a bug.

It’s akin to the internet I remember from earlier days, like online forums where people just helped each other with no reason other than they wanted to.