Rejecting Modernity: Turning over a New Leaf in Social Medias

That's right, time for a big one: an entire dedicated guide for anyone willing to switch over to decentralized alternatives to social medias. This will include most of the popular ones, the reaaons why people are switching off and the alternatives that you can use.

So.. it's time to take a step back from the world of centralized social medias, and unfold the curtains, unveiling.. the Fediverse.

Let us begin this group entry in the Rejecting Modernity series with..


Twitter: The Move to Mastodon

It has been made officially obvious that the OG Twitter we used to know is no more. Twitter is now directly becoming an AI-first, consumers last service, and even worse, Bluesky has failed to provide its mission of being AI free.

Twitter has two recent features that has permanently ruined how people handle art on the platform. Recently, on Christmas Eve, Elon would decide to roll out one of the arguably worst Twitter updates if you're an artist or someone who posts themselves on the daily.. to make it so that you may edit any image with Grok. This feature, along with the previous feature to generate images using Grok was used to create content so heinous that if I were to mention it here, this entire Rentry would be deleted off the face of the Internet.. and starting from January 15th, you're no longer able to opt out of having your images be used to train AI. Every image you post on Twitter will now be used to train their AI, whether you want it to or not. This will harm artists, having their hard work be stolen away by some stupid AI.

If you think this problem is enough for you to quit Twitter, tell your followers deuces, because in my personal opinion, Mastodon is your greatest choice to moving. Forget Bluesky, forget Facebook, it's time to go full decentralization. Hell, it's pretty easy to join in too, and once you do, you'll probably learn too that Bluesky was already doomed before you even had the idea of going on there. If you want the depths of this tutorial, I suggest visiting this quick start guide for more info.

  1. Pick your instance of Mastodon, which, in itself, may lead to a pretty deep rabbit hole you might get confused over. I suggest using instances.social to choose your preferred instance, but if you wanna go the easy route, just choose the mastodon.social instance, which you can sign up for by clicking the link listed here.
  2. Read the rules! This one is pretty obvious but a lot of people tend to skim this one over, so I suggest reading the rules. After that, create your account and set up your profile. If you want some help, click the links listed in this point for extra help on how to set up your profile. I would also set up 2FA just to be safe too. For a refresher on how to do so, click this link here.
  3. Go follow some people. Some people will be on other Mastodon instances, but lucky for you, as Mastodon's instances are all connected, all you have to do is find their handles. If their instance is different from yours, simply add the instance name they're on to the handle, and there you go!

And that is all! If you've been following me across my adventure to attempt to step away from the centralized social media landscape, you might notice I've been winding down on YT and Bluesky. My plan is to wipe those accounts off so I can focus on more decentralized areas of the internet. There's a CNET article on how to begin permanently deleting your X account, so I suggest following that after you've switched.


Instagram: Direct to Pixelfed

There are actually many reasons that connect off of every Meta platform in this list. Meta has made so many bad decisions that I can't even list every individual one.

To put a long story short, Instagram is doing what TikTok is currently doing and performing a lot of censorship. Censorship that could potentially harm gathering of information.

They also share the same privacy concerns that Facebook and WhatsApp share, except way worse.. and not just that, you can't even delete your account without accessing the app, and all new accounts are usually flagged as malicious meaning you would have to give up your ID or face if for whatever reason Meta manages to flag your account.

The algorithm sucks, and ends up usually promoting racism, brainrot on Reels... and speaking of, Reels will eventually, and probably has now transformed into a neverending hellscape of NSFW content that should have been banned, or prohibited.. and this is also because Insta scaled down their moderation, as opposed to what Facebook is doing, which explains the Reels and their heinous content.

If you think this is enough to have you consider leaving Insta, wave goodbye to your old followers, for there's this decentralized version of Insta named Pixelfed, an ad-free FOSS Instagram, without any of the privacy concerns or worries about having to deal with Reels completely devastating your Feed. You can even limit things for yourself and your followers just in case! Even further, you won't have to deal with the AI nonsense Meta keeps injecting their social medias with recently, and just have a more relaxing time on there than on Insta.

Setting up is just as simple as Mastodon is, find a server, register an account, follow some people. Unlike Masto, however, they DO give you the ability to search for the type of server you want directly from the Pixelfed site itself, but if you still want an easy out, pixelfed.social is the most popular Pixelfed server there, so go on there and find your new audience!

If you wish to begin winding down on your Instagram account, I suggest following this article's instructions for a quick guide.


Facebook: Finding New Friends on friendi.ca

Facebook has become nothing but AI now... Comment sections are now entirely filled with AI bots, every post on Facebook that you see has the chance to be entirely AI generated meaning, you now have to play an entire guessing game in order to figure out whether or not it's AI generated, the moderation is so AI and so dense that it has a chance to ban you on a whim without you actually doing anything, and you can't even die in peace without Facebook intruding on your privacy and trying to make a version of yourself, made entirely with AI!

Not just that, but one thing that Facebook shares with Insta and WhatsApp is its privacy.. or rather the lack thereof, as about just a bit ago, people found out that Facebook is now stealing your gallery images without permission for "information".

Also, and I do not know why, but Meta is paywalling shareable links now on FB which surely, is bound to go over well, and won't cause the collapse of the whole damn platform.

If this sounds like a good reasoning for you to leave the entire platform, your Facebook friends may be sad to see you go, but you can bring them along with you on your new journey to friendica, a decentralized Facebook equivalent, with the Facebook features you love, without the AI, and without Meta being an absolute pain in the butt to have to keep a watch out for when your post suddenly disappears, your FB friends suddenly get sent to the shadow realm, which has.. evidentally happened too many times for me to count, and you suddenly get banned from the entire platform because you made one tiny little offensive comment.

Setup is mostly the same as Mastodon, with the added ability of making your own server. I do suggest you check out the public servers if you don't have the ability to do so. Choose whatever looks the most popular, though I suggest libranet.de as it's open and popular.

After you've done that, I suggest beginning to bookend your Facebook account by following this very cool guide someone on Reddit provided.


WhatsApp: Making the Switch to Signal

Sharing its spot with Facebook, Whatsapp has really horrible security measures, as it was recently found out that WhatsApp doesn't really 'encrypt' your data properly, meaning any hackers can just go in, steal that data, decrypt it, and you said data to dox the hell out of you.

So I ask.. do you want a proper way of messaging without having to worry about these problems, or god forbid, having to use mfing Telegram?

Well, try Signal, a WhatsApp alternative that puts privacy in the forefront, instead of just kinda.. being there. And much like all other decentralized social medias, it's adless, meaning you won't have to worry about this nefarious ads getting in the way of talking time with your partner!

Setting up is simple! You'll need a phone, however, at this point, practically everyone has a phone, so you should be perfectly fine. I suggest following this guide if you want the meat and potatoes.

After you've done that, I suggest following this guide to begin winding down on your WhatsApp account.


TikTok: Making Loops Matter to You

If you're a person who doesn't particularly like politics, you'll sorta be displeased to find out that Trump or rather his administration technically owns the US division of TikTok, meaning if you're in the US, your TikTok app is maintained by the same guy who might be the reason why it'll collapse soon.. Thanks to this, the app can now collect your precise location ( even which was a problem before, but it's now even more of a problem, because well
.. the US) censor pro-Palestinian content ( which has caused the platform to begin buckling under it's weight due to people who are against this change), and entire account bans over criticism of Trump, ICE, and things related to a.. certain individual who's files are currently being somewhat unredacted as we speak.

If you think this news is bad enough for you to leave TikTok, wave goodbye to what TikTok followers you have, and take your move to Loops, an decentralized alternative to TikTok, without the fear of either having it shut down entirely, or having a corporation owning it. This time, you own the platform, you own your community.. and you make the rules, and much like all other social medias using ActivityPub, can even connect with all other social medias above this one, meaning your followers can follow you until the heat death of the internet, without being siloed in!

Setting up is basically the same as all other social medias in the Fediverse, but you need a phone for this one so yeah.. You're bound to find an audience here, so go wild!

Once you've made your decision, you may begin following this guide to delete your TikTok account. Do this quickly, as I do not trust what will happen if you take your time with this process.


Pinterest: Support Actual Artists

It was been rumored that OpenAI has the money to buy out Pinterest, but they do not have the plans on doing so, and as of making this, OpenAI has now lost the money to do so and has ended up in a trillion dollars amount of debt, which is not only hilarious, but even if they wanted to, they couldn't now.

However, this does go to show that Pinterest might not be lasting longer than we thought.

For those reading who are Pinterest users or really like scrolling through Pinterest, but don't want to face another company losing their infant and having it tarnished, might I suggest a new art platform for youm?

Behold, Purely Human! A anti-AI art platform meant for washed up artists who had to move from Twitter and soon, even Pinterest. Signing up to Purely Human is even easier than every other decentralized social media alternative here, and only requires you to head to this sign up page in order to join the platform.


Discord: Migration and Preservation

Despite Discord delaying this update, it is still inevitable that age verification will hit this platform like many others that have been listed in the Rejecting Modernity guides. For anyone who still remembers the initial rollout, you'll remember the fact that it unfortunately failed in a spectacular way.

The Persona servers are so badly kept, that everyone's ID's are now publicly available information, and Persona has apparently been sending people's IDs and face scans to the US government, so they can be put on watch lists for "suspicious activity".

It even got to the point where Discord had to cancel their Persona partnership after numerous backlash, and delay the age update.. however, it is still coming and it is still dangerous. All servers with potentially heinous content, or suggestive channels are now at risk of being age gated, via an AI, and now entire accounts are being taken down because of messages.

If this terrifies you to the point where you want to quit Discord in order to avoid getting doxed, I don't blame you! Unfortunately, however, a lot of these alternatives are a bit hard to explain in mere words, especially when we're doing something like this we're covering other alternatives in an entire genre like social medias.

What I can give you is this neat little website called Discordless, which is a good spot to find some alternatives just incase you don't want to handle with the ID verification nonsense. It also provides the reasons why these alternatives are good, if not, a lot more better than how Discord usually handles their stuff. Remember, the ID stuff isn't just about the kids, it's also for data collection.

I do not suggest deleting your Discord account, but rather leaving it behind and canceling your Nitro. You'll need to come back to it eventually to get everything out from there before the platform proceeds to die.


However, your decision is the important part here. I've given you the steps, and I've given you the reasoning.. but it's up to you to fully decide whether or not you want to take the plunge into the Fediverse.

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Pub: 18 Feb 2026 17:13 UTC

Edit: 31 Mar 2026 12:48 UTC

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