Let me explain why I’m so adamant about owning my own social media server.

Chris Trottier

Back when Twitter was a thing—before Elon Musk—I remember it like it was yesterday. I owned a social media consultancy, and much of my work was tied to Twitter. I relied on it heavily.

One day, I was working for a client, and everything was going fine. We had just used Twitter the day before to host a hashtag chat. Engagement was strong, and things were happening. At the time, we were also working on a decentralized social media service, which may have played a significant role in what happened next.

During the chat, we discussed how centralized platforms can spread and even incentivize conspiracy theories. We used QAnon as an example to highlight the problems with algorithms.

The very next day, my client’s company was banned from Twitter. Completely shut down. His personal Twitter account was banned too. My consultancy? Banned. A bunch of unrelated hobby accounts I managed were also banned—including a Star Trek fan account I’d run for years.

For some reason, they didn’t outright ban my personal account, but they shadowbanned me. No matter what I tweeted, only 30 people would ever see it. And this was despite having 8,000 followers at the time. Twitter was intentionally rate-limiting the reach of my posts.

That’s when I had a stark realization: if I don’t own my social media accounts, I own nothing. I exist entirely at the whims of someone else.

I learned something crucial: paranoia. If you don’t own it, you can’t depend on it. If it’s not your data, it’s someone else’s data. If you don’t own your online identity, someone else will claim ownership and monetize it however they wish.

This is why, when I explore decentralized social media platforms, I always ask myself: how feasible is it for me to own the basic services? Ideally, everyone should be able to own their social media from start to finish—affordably and with confidence.

This is why I continue to run atomicpoet.org and why I’ve owned it for years now.

Justin Thomas

@atomicpoet I take it a bit further; I want to be able to build my platform using an agreed upon protocol from scratch. #ActivityPub lets me do that. I'm skeptical about BlueSky's commitment in that regard.