I don't remember if I've mentioned this or not on the blog, and it's relevant to this post, so I'll say it again just in case. I have coffee every Tuesday morning with four guys in their seventies. I'm the "kid" in the group because I'm only fifty-one. We talk politics, laugh a lot, drink too much coffee and I answer a lot of tech questions. That's been happening more this year because of AI and the rise of the ever-present politically repugnant tech billionaires showing up in the press (the mainstream press - they've been in the tech press forever). One of them heard a story on NPR yesterday about Gil Duran's new book, The Nerd Reich and came in hot about it, upset that he had no idea that the "grey" tech billionaires were so intent on taking over the country.

And after talking about how I've actually met some of them and, hell, worked at the same company as at least one of them, we started talking about what it means to be a tech "billionaire" and how most of their money isn't actually money in a bank - it's all wrapped up in equity in tech companies. For the most part, those companies aren't public yet, so that equity is "trapped" there until the company is sold or goes public. For people like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, who have publicly traded companies, they could sell their shares for actual dollars, but mostly don't. They do the same thing the other paper billionaires do: they borrow against the equity of those shares and spend that.

It's easy to feel powerless in the face of what seems like an army of shitty rich men intent on destroying democracy, the environment, and everything just because they can.

Which is when the lightbulb went on. How do you hurt billionaires? Most of them made their billions on consumer tech. Their stocks only have value if consumers keep using their products.

Stop giving their products your eyeballs!

There was a study that popped up in the news recently that 90-something percent of posts on Instagram are ads. It doesn't take long scrolling it to see that, even if that number is inflated, it's not that inflated. Spend any time on Facebook or LinkedIn and the story is the same. Your friends no longer show nearly as often as "suggested" or "sponsored" posts. Social media has lost the social, and it's all about the algorithm.

There was another study that since Elon Musk bought twitter, spending literally any significant time on it can move people further to the right.

The evidence is clear the algorithmic social media is bad for us. It makes us depressed, feeds us non-stop bullshit, and exists only to enrich people who don't seem to care about the harms they cause.

The good news is that doing the right thing for democracy and the planet is also the right thing to do for ourselves!

You can start small. Delete Instagram and Facebook off your phone. Try not to check them on the web. It will be hard. The apps are addictive. It might take several tries to quit.

You don't even have to delete your accounts - there are some people you might only talk to on Facebook Messenger. That's fine too. Just reducing your engagement hurts them!

Social media is still fun. Ditch the algorithm and get federated.

While everyone was trapped in the walled garden of corporate social media, the web was still out here being weird and wonderful. People never stopped blogging. RSS didn't die. Along came something called The Fediverse. It's the social web, but without a central authority or gatekeeper. Anyone can create a server and then choose what set of servers they federate their community with. It's beautiful.

There seems to be a fediverse version of most types of social media:

• Mastodon, Pleroma and GoToSocial are like Twitter
• PeerTube is like YouTube
• Pixelfed is like Instagram
• Lemmy and Piefed are like Reddit

All of those might be brand new to you. I'd recommend checking out fedidb to get an idea of the breadth of the Fediverse and see if anything is right for you.

This isn't the same as corporate social media. It's not as slick or as easy, because it's not meant to drag you in and keep you there, but it is fun as hell. It's full of interesting people doing really interesting things.

To get started, I recommend checking out Mastodon. It's pretty mature at this point, and there are a ton of apps and servers to choose from. You can start on the "main" Mastodon server from the homepage, but I have a small pitch for you...

A pitch for the indie web

The Fediverse runs on open source software maintained by normal (OK, that's stretching it, nerdy but fun) people who have day jobs and families. Getting used to paying for it is a good idea. In that spirit, I've been a customer of omg.lol for a few years now and love it. It's run by a lovely guy named Adam who lives in Louisville who runs a Mastodon server for customers, and keeps building us fun little web things to play with like a blogging tool, a profile a /now page, etc. It's cheaper than a fancy coffee a month, and you're supporting a real person who loves what they do.

If omg.lol doesn't fit you, look around for a server that does. Mastodon.org has a servers list. Look around. There's one for literally anything you're into. Consider paying for it.

Oh, and once you sign up, I'd love to be your first follow. Following can be a bit of an adventure on the Fediverse, but might as well jump into the deep end!

The only way out is through and the only way to take away the tech oligarchs' power is to stop feeding their products. This is just one small, but impactful, way to do that and improve our own mental health in the process.