It’s been a while, and over the past year I’ve moved and consolidated my Fediverse identities, so it felt like the right time for an updated #introduction.
I began my Fediverse journey on fosstodon.org and mastodon.art. Before long, though, I realized I wanted more control over my online spaces, which led me down the path of running my own instances. Along the way I launched jabber.social (Snikket), fairly.social (Mastodon), and snaps.social (Pixelfed). While I enjoyed building and running them, I eventually recognized that maintaining community servers long-term required more mental bandwidth than I could sustainably give.
That shift ultimately led me to #selfhosting with #YunoHost. The early learning curve—and finding the right VPS—was a bit rough, but once I got past that stage, things settled into a much smoother and more manageable rhythm.
Today, I self-host services for Friendica, BookWyrm, FreshRSS, Wallabag, LinkStack, Matrix, and Prosody, and I’m considering adding a dedicated note-taking app next.
Beyond the infrastructure side of things, I’m an aspiring 2D/3D artist and occasional photographer with a long-standing love of science fiction. Having my own corner of the Fediverse makes it easier to share works in progress, experiments, and ideas—without the pressure that often comes with larger corporate platforms.
Overall, I’m much happier being self-hosted and largely disconnected from corporate social media.
The Penguin of Evil
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Sadly not just social media. Same is as true in the press (where female chancellors get mocked as Rachel from accounts, or for their outfits) - I'm not sure social media is the source of the problem somehow.
Likewise I think a social media ban is a bad idea (and a disaster for disabled kids) - we need to actually fix social media, which means like a pub some people need to be shown the door and told not to come back
Matúš Chochlík
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Ret
in reply to Neil Brown • • •the depressing reality is that a group of (mostly) male, rich, powerful people (MPs and the broader British political class) are now discussing further punishing this group of young people by isolating them from any support they'd otherwise be able to find.
Meanwhile the Online Safety Act is slowly making it more and more difficult for proper social media - circles centred around interests, passions and identities - to exist. Driving more users into all the platforms this young person talks about here - Instagram, TikTok etc.
Once again, politicians have taken a problem, been offered nine hundred and ninety nine solutions and picked option 1000 - make everything worse.
Colman Reilly
in reply to Neil Brown • • •we've got to find a way to make society in general consider women as people rather than as objects.
toot.wales/@HarriettMB/1161191…
HarriettMB (@HarriettMB@toot.wales)
HarriettMB (Tŵt Cymru | Toot Wales)agnes
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Sensitive content
Porky Nolosdos
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦
in reply to Neil Brown • • •@neil
ChloChlo
in reply to Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 • • •@osma
Social media has also helped incredible amounts of people though. It's allowed marginalized minorities to find people like them. It's allowed people to organize against oppressive governments.
It's also curated local events and increased turnout and access to so many things for so many people.
We can say "burn it to the ground" and part of me wants to agree, but... It would harm a lot of people too.
Hedders
Unknown parent • • •Hedders
Unknown parent • • •Mrs.Malice ❤️🔥✨
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Love how The Guardian could’ve run this exact article about online misogyny any time in the past ten years to make an argument against monetizing sexism and destroying the social fabric between genders. But now that the billionaires want a surveillance bubble, it’s truly their rag’s time to shine!
Ban abusers from public spaces, not their victims. It’s really not that complicated if we put our minds to it, but power loves to pretend.
Thank you for sharing this!
Robin Barton
in reply to Neil Brown • • •stony kark
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Darwin Woodka
in reply to Neil Brown • • •badambassador
Unknown parent • • •I think this hints that the solution to this problem might not be of a legal nature.
OK, that reads like I'm suggesting something illegal would be the answer. Perhaps a better phrasing would be that there isn't a legislative answer to this question?
Renata 🇨🇦🐈
in reply to Neil Brown • • •I have an easy fix no one wants to talk about:
Punish people who don’t treat women as humans
No buts. Just punish them.
Pedro Quixote ‽ aka MultiVax
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Passwordsarehard4
Unknown parent • • •Steve Moore
in reply to Neil Brown • • •I’m so glad my sisters didn’t have social media to deal with, the face to face misogyny & sexism was bad enough. My grandnieces will have to grow up even tougher. I hope they kick some asses.
Jordan Biserkov
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Important article. I highly recommend the "Men who hate women" book by Laura Bates.
It shows how the hate towards women is not accidental, but the result of an highly organized political project that uses it to gain power. No ban on social media would accomplish anything unless that machine is stopped.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Who_…
Men Who Hate Women (Bates book) - Wikipedia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Giles of the Jungle
in reply to Neil Brown • • •I wish I could say this article didn't read as I expected, that I was surprised by what it reports.
I remember some boys at school could talk like that. Everyone avoided them. Lads will be lads, we said. This was the nineties.
Decades on, that attitude has not only survived, it's been legitimised on an industrial scale, by algorithms, influencers and people in power.
Preparing my kids for this world, giving them the skills and fortitude needed to traverse it, is a helluva challenge.
Kerplunk
in reply to Neil Brown • • •15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day.
Disgusting is nowhere near strong enough for the contempt I feel for such stinking ignorant misogynist moronic excuses for male humans that write such crap.
I can sadly also assure only the media has changed not the content. When I went to school it was big mouth bragger words or scribbled on paper.
Passwordsarehard4
Unknown parent • • •Viral Obscurity
in reply to Neil Brown • • •It is truly awful online for anyone with a remotely feminine profile
I've had a lot of crap online over the years & I'm not a teen & never shared photos or anything personal
The problem with bans for under 16s is that this stuff still exists for everyone & delaying exposure to it until 16 doesn't solve the problem
The problem is govts won't make platforms stop feeding & promoting toxic content
Many platforms have removed their harassment protections
The article is essential reading
ChloChlo
Unknown parent • • •@benjamineskola @osma
To be clear, while this article is focused on teen girls, this is the stuff every minority sees on social media as well.
I'm trans. I have to actually relegate myself to only small corners of the internet because everywhere else feels so unsafe.
Meta no longer considers slurs and harassment of trans people as "against their policies." So any Meta platform is insufferable for me now.
Twitter actually encourages harassment of trans people and made the word "cis" a bannable offense.
And if I stray too far from the queer spaces of Reddit, I'll get called a man and doxxed pretty quickly.
I've been doxxed while using Insta in the past simply for existing as a trans person.
But the algorithm is the problem here. It's force feeding hate to kids and teaching them that it's good to hate. Monetizing hate is the issue and is what should be regulated.
Frederik
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Democratic Socialist BillJRyan
in reply to Neil Brown • • •vepř jako pepř
in reply to Neil Brown • • •Gje
in reply to Neil Brown • • •