Non-toxic social network
Last updated: August 5, 2022
Here’s our favorite non-toxic social network: Mastodon.
Why: Today’s giant social networks make money on surveillance, manipulation, and amplification of toxic content. If you’re tired of the garbage on Twitter and Facebook, head over to Mastodon: a decentralized, non-corporate network of Twitter-like servers. Without the constant need to monetize “engagement,” Mastodon provides a more civil, low-key platform for posting and networking. And it’s free.
• Web: joinmastodon.org
(On Mastodon, follow Good Reports founder Mark Hurst: @markhurst@mastodon.social)
--> See also: Moa Party, an open-source tool intended to allow cross-posting between and Mastodon and Twitter.
--> See also: Aral Balkan’s thread on following PeerTube accounts on Mastodon.
Other options
• fediverse.info offers pointers to “a diverse community of interconnected social platforms” - including Mastodon (as listed above) and many other decentralized platforms not owned by Big Tech
• Friendica, a decentralized social network created and maintained by a group of volunteers
• GNU social, “social communication software for public and private communications . . . [as] part of the GNU project, it’s 100% free software, with no malicious features or spyware”
• Tildes.net, a link-aggregator-style community, as described in this announcement post
• Nitter, “a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy,” according to its About page.
• SpaceHey, “a space for friends,” was started by a German teenager and is currently supported by sticker sales and ads (with no tracking).
• Slow Social says it’s “a social network built for friends, not influencers.” Still in development.
• Metafilter, a long-running link-aggregator community
• MLTSHP, a volunteer-led community for sharing and commenting on images
• Micro.blog, an independent community of microbloggers (see this review by Alan Jacobs, who a few days earlier was on Techtonic - click "Pop-up player")
• How (and Why) to Avoid Twitter (by James Milin-Ashmore on ethical.net, Sept 2019) recommends Mastodon and Micro.blog, as we do above, as well as Movim, Aether, and Scuttlebutt.
• Diaspora, a decentralized social network originally based on an NYU project (see Wikipedia entry)
• MeWe.com, a corporate social network claiming to be privacy-focused. Be aware of a political angle: Inside MeWe, Where Anti-Vaxxers and Conspiracy Theorists Thrive (by EJ Dickson in Rolling Stone, May 2019) reports that "a large number of [MeWe] users skew toward the right-wing or even right-wing extremist end of the spectrum."
• Cancel, a parody of social networks. Watch the video on the homepage for an explanation.
Our own social network
• Creative Good (the company behind this site, Good Reports) has an online community dedicated to “making tech better.” Sign up here to gain access to the Creative Good Forum, our online site based on free and open source Discourse software.
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