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+<h1 class="page-title">Why we must insist on Free Network Services</h1>
+<p class="date">Published 2022-04-30 on <a href="/">Anjan's Homepage</a></p>
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+There has been renewed interest in the fediverse [fn:5].
+That is websites that you can install on your own hardware, come up with your own rules, and talk to people on other websites with social media like features.
+Imagine being able to comment on Youtube with your Facebook account and vice versa or post to your Instagram and have it appear on everyone on Twitter - that is what the fediverse is!
+Beyond these technical benefits, all this software is Free software - that is it respects your freedoms to community and rights to inspect what it's doing.
+Lets go over some of the other benefits of using Free software network services.
+
+I hope my personal experience encourages you to at least post on Free network services in parallel to proprietary social media.
+
+
+* Shouldn't I Go Where the Eyeballs are?
+
+All of the important content I create on the internet goes on federated, free network services.
+Listing these free network services (and their proprietary "equivalents"): peertube (youtube), pleroma (twitter), and sourcehut (github).
+People seem to look at the number of people on a social media site and assume the one with the most users are the only ones worth having.
+If the site is proprietary, you have no control over the algorithm and it's unlikely that the algorithm will prioritize your content over content that benefits the corporate interests.
+If people could "organically" grow on these proprietary network services, what incentive would there be to buy ads and pay them?
+The proprietary network services' business model works against the incentives of organic growth.
+
+In contrast, on Free network services, my content has seen a tremendous amount of organic growth.
+When Sxmo was a very young project, Drew Devault (creator of Sourcehut) made Sxmo a featured project on Sourcehut and posted in on his Mastodon (federated Twitter) account.
+The popularity of Sxmo is partly a consequence of how much it embraces free network services to communicate and promote itself.
+Administrators and users of Free network services are usually thrilled to have your content and help you in promoting it!
+
+Moreover, the design of the Free services encourages organic growth - without payment!
+When joining Mastodon, you must choose an instance which controls the rules and interests the instance is targetting [fn:1].
+Since Mastodon follows the fediverse structure - you can talk to people on other instances and they can talk to you.
+However, the "local timeline" shows people on your instance and posts on the local timeline will likely be things your instance finds interesting.
+So art instances have art and technology instances have cool projects people are working on.
+Rather than being another drop in the firehose that is the twitter timeline, the local timeline connects you to the people most likely to have the same interests as you.
+The consequences of these design decisions are profound.
+I regularly get interactions, suggestions, ideas, and contributions from a diverse group of people.
+Moreover, the content I get to see on Free network services is more interesting because it's not constant culture war and brand posting [fn:2].
+
+* Can Free Software handle the load?
+
+People will see news stories about the massive load big tech's network service have on the planet [fn:3] and assume that this is the cost of storing their pictures of brunch.
+Indeed, Google has requested aquifer water to cool their datacenters from water famished regions of the United States [fn:4].
+Most of these data center's resources are dedicated to serve targetted advertisement.
+That is, a social media that has no targetted advertisements and mechanisms to prevent advertisements - ie. free software and federation, will be more eco-friendly.
+
+Furthermore, often users will conclude the operational costs of Google and Facebook are how much it costs to run a social media company.
+Again, this is misleading cause most of the operational costs are spent on advertising the network, UX/UI research to manipulate people into acting against their own self interests, lobbying for exploiting the environment, and analysis of user behavior.
+Without the need for mass surveillance, targetting, and advertising - Social media can and is run by everyday people using Free software network services.
+
+
+* How is the moderation?
+
+Moderation is difficult because one person's rightful ban is another person's censorship.
+Luckily, the federated and instance driven nature of the Fediverse allows for nuance in the "free speech" debate.
+Recall on the fediverse, a core feature is the ability to talk to people on other servers and even other social media platforms.
+Suppose a fediverse program or instance admin introduces ads or does moderation in a way you dont approve of **but all your friends dont want to migrate**.
+You dont have to choose between supporting bad moderation or losing all your friends, you can change instances and still talk to friends on your old instance.
+The ease of migration makes the whole network much more likely to follow the user's wishes.
+
+Since each instance has a moderator team and instances are usually small, I have found the moderation on the fediverse to be much better.
+You can talk to the **people** doing the moderation and often the administrator will contact you directly regarding their decisions.
+
+
+* Conclusion
+
+The fediverse is how social media on the internet should have happened.
+It encourages free association with moderation managed communally - join [[https://debian.social][Debian's instances]], your [[https://mastodon.mit.edu][university's instance]], or run your own!
+Lets support the fediverse and ourselves by joining!
+
+** How to join
+
+- Mastodon (twitter): https://joinmastodon.org/communities
+- peertube (youtube): I recommend https://diode.zone instance
+- writefreely (medium): https://writefreely.org/
+- sourcehut (github): https://sourcehut.org
+
+* Footnotes
+
+[fn:5] https://mastodon.social/users/Gargron/statuses/108205005223077798
+
+[fn:4] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/googles-plan-to-use-aquifer-for-cooling-in-south-carolina-raises-concerns/
+
+[fn:3] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
+
+[fn:2] The culture war^tm keeps people engaged^tm so they can keep seeing the brand posting
+
+[fn:1] https://joinmastodon.org/communities