I thought the consensus in non-social-media media was that all social media was unhealthy.
Now we're getting an ad (or infomercial, if you prefer that term) from traditional media for an open-sourced Facebook / Twitter wannabe killer.
I guess they just take whatever stance that fits their unstated goals.
Corporate-owned social media that tries to pay its development and hosting costs by putting as many ads in front of your eyeballs is unhealthy. The fact that this is pretty much all we've had for the past decade or two makes it easy to assume this means all social media is unhealthy.
And digital lives are more easily monitored by governments -- not just the American or European governments, which is already bad enough. This too is dangerous.
Being able to go into a community of like-minded people translates in the meat-world to meat communities where your neighbors might have a completely different perception of reality than each other. This too is problematic.
I understand now that there is no company behind it. It's open-source and developed with good intentions, but as the saying goes, the graveyard is full of good intentions. I deeply distrust anything that entices me to reveal personal data in a medium monitored by the secret police.
How much these objections weigh for you depends on your priorities. Non-corporate, open-sourced social-media isn't significantly different for me to assuage my very real Internet privacy terrors.
One can argue lots of things, but I think it's a crucial support network for people not near lots of like-minded others. What "real life" peer group is a trans kid in small town in Kansas supposed to hang out with and get support from?
I worry for what transpeople -- who lack meat-world social choices -- are enticed to reveal about themselves online to the secret police. Our governments' thugs are happy to lend an unsympathetic ear to their problems.
One mitigating factor, though, is that there seems to be a wider disconnect between Mastodon IDs and real life IDs than there is between real life and Twitter. I have plenty of Mastodon friends who could be sitting at the next desk as I type this for all I know. Also, having multiple Mastodon accounts is seen as a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to do, so @joe@joefamily.name might post vastly different stuff than on their @jane@transfriendly.social.
There's no company.
Somehow I end up not following my own advice and simplifying and making only one point per comment. That way people wouldn't focus on a minor thing about it and ignore the rest of it.
(The advice being: I think a good part of the reason why some one-line comments end up getting so many upvotes is because they say only one thing. The more things you try to say then the more reasons there will be for people to disagree and downvote you so no one else reads your message.)
I know what the real problem is. No rapport was established. You are in the defensive because you feel I corrected you as well and thus passed judgement. It's human relationships.