the paradox of connection

I read Ava’s commentary on the absurdity of social media norms and thought I’d pile onto it because lots of people consider the new decentralized platforms like the Fediverse to have addressed most if not all structural ills that plague the legacy platforms’ cultures. I’m not saying that the Fediverse and maybe even Bluesky don’t address at least a couple of the legacy platforms’ shortcomings; they do. However, they don’t go anywhere near far enough because they want to maintain a level of familiarity for switching users while keeping engagement management for potential celebrities/companies/organizations using their platforms on comparable levels as the others. So significant change is far from the case, the reason for which I’ll attempt to explain in this post. Before I start, I admit that I’m mostly thinking of Mastodon when I speak of the Fediverse as that is the software that most people, including me, know and associate with the Fediverse the most. Moreover, it’s the piece of…