The NRC of 11 January 2025 published an article on alternative social media. NRC covered the use of alternatives in light of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter/X, and the news that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is going to stop content moderation because it would limit freedom of expression.
Sander van der Waal of Waag Futurelab was interviewed by Marloes de Koning about using the social media alternative Mastodon:
'Sander van der Waal has been active on the social medium Mastodon for a few years now. On Mastodon you see messages from other users in a feed, with text, images and links. And you can respond to them. It looks like the global platforms Instagram, X, Facebook and TikTok, yet is radically different.
Users can set up their own server on Mastodon and set the rules for their community there. On Instagram, TikTok or X, the company largely determines what appears in your feed. On Mastodon, you do that yourself. When a video has ended, for example, the next one does not automatically start playing.'
From: ‘Can things be different on social media? Alternatives to Meta are not yet a solution', by Marloes de Koning in NRC, 11 January 2025
Investing in alternatives
Waag Futurelab believes it is important for Dutch society to maintain control over the public debate, and therefore urges the government and other public institutions to invest in existing alternatives to social media such as Mastodon.
Join the conversation on waag.social
On Mastodon, we are not just users but host a so-called instance on which anyone can participate. Here, we are more than just a user of ‘the digital village square’: we bear responsibility for its safety. We have established clear and transparent access and moderation rules to guard this. We call on as many people as possible on regular social media to switch over.
