Mastodon seems to solve the problems for those that use it. It's a genuine social network that people use to talk to each other and form real communites. Not owned or manipulated by any one person or organization, no algorithms or gaming. It's a constant meme that "going viral" on mastodon is when your shitpost gets 50 boosts and likes.

But the same people decrying corporate social media declare mastodon a "failure" because it hasn't captured literally 100% of Facebook users and doesn't male thirty billion dollars. Shrug.

The people on this site are, overwhelmingly, the people who already "came together" to build businesses like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and so on.

We pretend we're the victims, but none of these platforms would have been built without an army of willing, enthusiastic, highly-paid engineers who made small "ethical compromises" every day.

And now that there's money made in something else, many of us would accept a seven-digit offer from OpenAI in a heartbeat, leaving the task of figuring out the downstream effects to other people.

I’d rather ask the Amish how can we fix the internet than a bunch of Bay Area VCs and FAANG employees.

Not all problems have technical solutions.

We need a national conversation (which we seem to be having) about the corrosive nature of these algos.

I personally think they should be liable for much more than they are under section 230.