other networks

On Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, we host(ed) a skillshare session around open social media. This post will be updated post-facto with relevant documentation on the session, but for now here are some pertinent links:

Ethical Alternatives:
https://alternativeto.net/
https://ethical.net/resources/
https://european-alternatives.eu/

Alternative Social Media Platforms:
What is Mastodon?
A beginner’s guide to Mastodon
A beginner’s guide to Bluesky
What is Bluesky?

“Migration” Tools:
https://openportability.org/en/auth/signin

Some notes post-session:

Attendees included a good mix of conventional social media users, alternative social media users, and abstainers.

Conventional social media users expressed concerns over:

• losing contact with friends and family
• not keeping up with general social trends and memes / feeling irrelevant
• lacking information necessary to switch to a platform that meets their needs and wants.
• inability to engage in day-to-day activities in non-US countries (i.e. whatsapp being de-facto required for student life in some european countries, business access being tied to whatsapp in many parts of the world)

Ultimately, 3 participants decided to join some form of alternative social media – 2 bluesky, 1 mastodon.

• bluesky adopters chose this option because of the existing academic and other communities on bluesky (#blacksky, etc.)
• curation and moderation tools were also a consideration for choosing bluesky
• the mastodon adopter chose this option because they were already invited to an existing server and so had overcome the server-choice hurdle. they were not able to set up an account as the server they chose required an application and approval process, but they did begin this process.