If you haven’t noticed how the social media landscape has changed recently, you probably haven’t used it for a while… In short: the ‘classic’ social media—X formerly Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—are now either nazi owned or have otherwise become very toxic! Time for a move!

Mastodon
I actually left Twitter quite a while ago already, and found quite a happy new home on Mastodon, my first venture into the Fediverse… What makes the Fediverse unique, is that that it’s decentralised and not owned by big corporations. That means that there isn’t just one central website or server for it, but you have to look around for a bit for an instance. You’ll be able to find and follow anyone you know the account name of from any instance, but you’re more likely to find interesting new accounts to follow if your instance suits your needs and interests. That’s why I use the instance Mastodon.green for my personal account, and Mastodon.beer for our Beers ‘n’ Bites in Brussels account!
Mastodon is still a bit lacking Belgian media, institutions, businesses, and other organisations so far. While Bluesky—where a lot of them are migrating to now, only to discover in a couple of months or years, that it can be bought by a tech billionaire just as easily as Twitter—is not quite part of the Fediverse (yet), with a bridge it is even possible to follow Bluesky accounts from Mastodon, and vice versa!


Pixelfed & more
But the Fediverse is way bigger than Mastodon! Another ‘platform’ that is booming right now, the fedi-replacement of Instagram, is Pixelfed, which I’m on already as well.
Bookwym is the fedi-version of Goodreads, and I found a home on the Rambling Readers instance!
I’ve only dipped my toes in Friendica, the fedi-version of Facebook, but still have to find another person I actually know on there…
But what’s the use of the Fediverse, with all those different platforms, you ask? Well, the beauty is, you don’t have to create an account on all of them—like I did—but just one(s) that suits your style most. For instance—pun intended—if you’re mostly in sharing photos, you’d create an account on Pixelfed. But with that Pixelfed account and app, you can then actually also follow a Mastodon account, without creating one yourself! Or, if you’re on Mastodon, but still interested in what I’m reading, follow my BookWyrm account!
Well, I hope that some of you will join me somewhere in the Fediverse soon!
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