[originally posted here]
So I recently joined post.news, and I’m following many of the famous (and less-famous) folks I follow(ed) on Twitter. But I’m still really concerned about yet another social media site that is controlled by a single entity, regardless of best intentions – I think Twitter’s founders also had great intentions and look where that ended up.

My instinct is that the future of the digital public square is federation – e.g. Mastodon/the Fediverse. (Find me there at @aelman@masto.ai). Post seems to have some nice tools – rich text, “tipping” (great way to monetize and reward great content creators), and hopefully can do good content moderation as well. But it’s still a single entity that could fall into the “wrong hands”.

As a user of these sites, there are three fundamental things that matter to me:

One – my time is limited. I don’t want to have to check in sixteen different places to find the content that matters most to me – i.e. the content posted by people who matter to me: my friends, and those people and organizations I trust.

Two – I don’t want to be harassed. Now, as a white male who also is fairly low-profile this is something that honestly I can’t speak to directly. But I do know that I want to be in a place where truly marginalized people are able to bring their full selves, and I know that harassment is a massive barrier to that.

Three – I want it to be easy to get in. Onboarding can be a huge barrier to entry for people who aren’t “tech-savvy” – i.e. MOST PEOPLE.

Number three is a UX problem that I’m well-qualified to talk about. It’s also highly solvable for any site. Number two requires effort – it requires time and resources for anyone who wants to operate this “public square,” and it is HARD, because everybody has a slightly different idea of what constitutes “harassment.” In the Fediverse, there are a bunch of tools that individuals and server admins can use to block offensive content and people, but actually using those tools effectively requires a lot of time that many volunteer admins just don’t have.

Number one – that’s what’s going to be trickiest. Because even before last week, the people I care about were split across at least Twitter and Facebook/Instagram (with a professional component on LinkedIn). Now, with the #TwitterMigration,they’re moving here, they’re moving to Hive, they’re moving to Tumblr, and they’re moving to the Fediverse. Now, if all these sites were part of the Fediverse, I’d be golden – I just pick a site with UI and content policies I like, and I subscribe to the people I want. If the site I’m on comes into the hands of a shitposting billionaire, I can switch and still follow the same people. For now, though, I’m stuck checking a zillion different places at various times.

All of which is to say – I hope Post.news joins Tumblr and (hopefully) Flickr in adding ActivityPub support in the relatively near future, and I hope everyone moves off $8chan/birdchan to a federated site as soon as possible. I’d love to follow you, but I can’t do it everywhere.