@INC it’s been Global Switch Day every day, ever since we launched the Unlike Us network on social media monopolies and their alternatives, back in 2011 đ and the related, now famous INC reader from 2013. I hate the ‘I told you so’ attitude but the prehistory of the social media alternatives is an interesting indeed, a yet untold story. Remember Discordia, back in 2003 and the Facebook Farewell Party in 2015? Keep cool. It’s never too late to leave Facebook, Insta, X. I anyway never believed in the guilt-driven neo-liberal calls to consumers to delete one’s own social media – for your own mental health being.
What’s striking about the recent uptake of Xodus calls is its capitalist ‘too late’ element (see Anna Kornbluh’s explanation of the term). What’s lacking at the moment is the contagious-viral-fun part, the seductive-subversive touch. Let’s dig into the time-killing of the smart phone habit, the boredom and loneliness aspect, in order get a better understanding how to call it the day and start something new, together. Let’s stop complaining about Musk, Trump and the other US oligarchs and the inability of Brussels to develop viable alternatives and use the momentum for ‘new beginnings’ as Hannah Arendt recommended.
See you elsewhere and let us know @INC where you’re gathering. Invite your friends to make the move together.
Here’s a random link list of pieces I collected on the topic over the past few week:
https://txt.lurk.org/on-not-scaling-lurk/ (the degrowth-permacomputing angle)
https://embedded.substack.com/p/free-our-feeds-decentralized-social-media (on the Free our Feeds initiative)
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/28/social-media-influencer-alleged-manufactured-symptoms-torture-charges-brain-surgery-baby-bail-hearing-ntwnfb (a reminder, again, why do we leave?)
And this is what the interesting newsletter of dyne,org had to say about the topic today:
Thankfully, there is a lot of alternatives out there in this day and age! Some are more convenient than others, and others are more freedom respecting than some. Of course, the corpo-silos are attuned to the phenomenon, trying to adapt their marketing lingo with cool buzz words like “Federated”, “Decentralized” and so on… Some nerds who fell for it jumped from one corporate hell-hole into another, are asking us to give them 30 million dollares americanos. This amount is needed to add “fire exits” to bluesky (AKA, to decentralize it). You know, in case the silo turns out to be ehm… well another silo. After all, we can’t just use anything to talk to each other: It has to have a je ne sais quoi of sex-appeal!
Either way, a popular movement has decreed that on February 1st 2025, a coordinated march out of the silos will take place. The idea is to take back control over the information we ingest and replace the usual suspects such as Facebacon, Twatter, Instaframe, and Wazzaaaaaap with their libre counter-part: Friendica, Mastodon, Pixelfed, Matrix, etc…
Here on planet dyne, we strongly recommend digital detoxing altogether. But we know cold-turkey is hard, and thus encourage everyone to take the steps they need. We love the Fediverse, but it is undeniable that Nostr’s underlying tech is very compelling. We just have to teach our grands how to manage a private key first!