Reconsidering my relationship with the Fediverse

I joined the Fediverse, or more specifically Mastodon, I think some time in 2021. I was drawn in because of the promise of a decentralized social network, a social network not controlled by a single company, but rather governed from the bottom up. Especially around the time Twitter went the way it did, there was a lot of hope that the Fediverse would take over as the de facto social network. I was excited to be a part of this change. I had meaningful conversations with people I would have never met otherwise, I was able to share my thoughts and ideas with a wider audience, and I felt like I was part of a community that was working towards something bigger than itself. People were kind, helpful, friendly – the Fediverse was a welcoming place to Twitter refugees and people who were tired of the toxicity of mainstream social media. In 2022 I started working on the infrastructure for toot.community (which will soon close down), I was of course also an admin and moderator. Those roles…