Hi octodon, I'm new to mastodon. Social media giants are too powerful and greedy; their only purpose is to make money by selling users' valuable personal information! Free federated social media are community driven and respect your privacy. I hope this concept takes off; it might, given the growing public privacy concerns with "mainstream" (rd. corporate) social media.
@jdo Idk. "Private social media" sounds a bit of an oxymoron.
@Nafrondel "private" is exactly what the other services are: controlled by one company on their infrastructure for the profit of their investors. Of course, all social media is public in that you put information out there for the world to see. Mastodon isn't surreptitiously collecting marketing data and selling ads at me.
@jdo To be fair - Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. aren't exactly doing it surreptitiously seeing as they buy up entire companies for that express purpose.
They're very public and up front about it - the cost of using their service is giving them access to your information.
But it is nice to have the option again. Even Twitter, google, and facebook started out as nothing more than no strings, free services.
But in the end, "if you aren't paying for the product - you are the product".
