I want to write an article that answers the question ‘Why should YOU join the Fediverse?’, which would basically be an exhaustive list of arguments for joining the Fediverse, each argument linked (LINKS PLEASE!) to an article/publication that illustrates it. I'll translate it into several languages.

Can you help me?

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[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago

My pitch is:

At the end of Web 1.0 and the start of Web 2.0 there was a rich ecosystem of forums, blogs (micro and macro), wikis, etc. However, you needed a different login for each one and the large social media companies, Big Web, saw their opportunity and made a more convenient offering - a site where everyone could go and talk to each other. That seemed great until a critical mass of people joined and then they found themselves locked into a walled garden, imprisoned by the network effect. That's when the enshittification started.

What the Fediverse is doing is rewinding to before the takeover by the Big Web and asking where the Small Web would have evolved to if it hadn't been sidelined. The answer is a protocol that would allow all those sites to speak to each other. And right there are the first glimmerings of the direction we should have taken - diaspora* and Friendica started in 2010, in fact it is felt in some quarters that Google+ (2011 until it was finished off by Facebook and Google's short attention span) lifted some features from them. Unfortunately, the Big Web smothered such innovations, and it is only now that the Fediverse's time has come.

The beauty of federation is you don't have to believe someone who is running an instance if they say they won't be evil, federation acts like a Ulysses Pact. y You can't be evil because the barrier to moving is so much lower because the network effect doesn't handcuff you to one instance. If an Admin starts power-tripping, you can move to another instance and carry on where you left off.