Reconsidering my relationship with the Fediverse - Mijndert Stuij

Reconsidering my relationship with the Fediverse

August 4, 2026

I joined the Fediverse, or more specifically Mastodon, I think some time in 2021. I was drawn in because of the promise of a decentralized social network, a social network not controlled by a single company, but rather governed from the bottom up. Especially around the time Twitter went the way it did, there was a lot of hope that the Fediverse would take over as the de facto social network. I was excited to be a part of this change.

I had meaningful conversations with people I would have never met otherwise, I was able to share my thoughts and ideas with a wider audience, and I felt like I was part of a community that was working towards something bigger than itself. People were kind, helpful, friendly – the Fediverse was a welcoming place to Twitter refugees and people who were tired of the toxicity of mainstream social media.

In 2022 I started working on the infrastructure for toot.community (which will soon close down), I was of course also an admin and moderator. Those roles exposed me to a side of the Fediverse that, up to that point, I had not seen. I saw the politics, the drama, the infighting, the power struggles, and the toxicity that can arise in large communities.

More and more we were the target of harassment, and I was personally attacked on multiple occasions because people disagreed with my actions as a moderator. I was called all kinds of names, I was threatened, and some people even tried to dox me. I've been on the internet for a long time, so I think I can handle a lot of these things. But I'm also just a human being, and it was exhausting to be on the receiving end of this kind of behavior.

A lot of this behavior came from people who were not even a part of the community, but rather people who were just looking for a fight. Always on the lookout for a reason to attack someone, to make themselves feel better, to feel like they had the high ground over someone else.

More often than not this came from people who preached inclusivity, love, open-mindedness, and acceptance. But through their actions they showed that they were not interested in those things, but rather in tearing others down. They made sure that Mastodon in fact became a toxic place where people are afraid to speak their minds at the risk of being attacked, harassed, or doxxed.

I'm not writing this piece to make myself look like a victim, or to make anyone else look bad. I'm writing this piece as self-help, to help me process the past and reflect on my relationship with the Fediverse and all social media in general. I want to be able to use and enjoy social media without the stress and anxiety of the past few years.

Mastodon gives you a lot of tools to block, mute, ignore and filter out people and content you don't want to see. But at the same time, those tools don't take away the resentment I feel towards the Fediverse at large. I really have to recalibrate my outlook, and I have to be more mindful and careful in my approach.

For the foreseeable future I will still be a part of the Fediverse, but increasingly as an observer rather than a participant. I will prune my following list, I will be using filters more aggressively. Over time I hope to either be able to enjoy the Fediverse again, or to be able to leave it all behind without any FOMO.

I want to make it so boring and uninteresting for myself that I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. So boring in fact, that I'll inevitably leave it all behind for whatever comes next. And whatever comes next will undoubtedly be more offline, more personal and more meaningful.

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