While waiting in line for a coxinha outside the Brazilian embassy in Berlin, where I had just voted, I started chatting with two young Brazilians who were spending a few months there.
Out of curiosity, I asked them which social media they used.
"Instagram. Facebook is for older people. We’re the Instagram generation,” they said. 😅
They were probably in their early twenties.
"What about TikTok?"
"That's for younger people."
Then, one of them said something that caught my attention:
"I miss when social media didn't have algorithms. I heard that in Australia, you can choose a timeline without an algorithm.”
So, naturally, I asked, "Have you ever heard of Mastodon or Pixelfed?"
Neither had.
I gave them my short pitch about the Fediverse: Imagine one of you prefers microblogging and uses Mastodon while the other prefers sharing photos and uses Pixelfed. You can still follow and interact with each other across platforms.
They seemed genuinely interested in the idea.
Today, while voting for Brazil's next president, I did a tiny bit of Fediverse evangelism in the coxinha line. 😂
What I found most interesting was meeting a young person who actively misses social media without algorithmic timelines but who had never heard of the Fediverse.
#Fediverse #Mastodon #Pixelfed #Instagram #TilTok #Brazil #Berlin
@everton137@social.vivaldi.net i wonder if it's possibly bc it's the media and other people on social media who talk about how social media didn't used to have algorithms, bc to my knowledge instagram etc has had algorithms for years. unless they mean they miss social media from like 15 years ago and they were on the internet in elementary school which, really is a thing that happens i guess 😅
what's interesting to me is hearing that tiktok is for people younger than young adults! i remember when it seemed like everybody shifted to instagram instead of facebook for connecting after you met someone, and that happened in the mid- to late 2010s.