Moving toward the Good Web doesn't require burning everything down first. Start somewhere. In increasing order of effort:
Try RSS
Readers: NetNewsWire (macOS/iOS, free), Feedly, Firefox built-in reader. Follow hundreds of personal sites, journalists, and newsletters without giving a platform your attention. One of the simplest acts of digital self-determination available.
Leave a comment
If you read a personal blog post that meant something to you, say so. This is how community forms on the Good Web — through the specific act of one person telling another: I was here and this mattered.
Export your data
Every major corporate platform (Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook) has a data export feature buried in settings. Use it. Your own memories and connections should not be exclusively in someone else's hands.
Get on Mastodon
joinmastodon.org/servers has a good instance picker. Fedi.tips is an excellent non-technical orientation guide. You don't have to leave corporate platforms first — exist in both for a while and see where you feel better.
Get on PixelFed
pixelfed.org — as simple as Instagram was in 2012. Federated, no algorithmic feed, no ads.
Join a forum
32-Bit Café, MelonLand, Tildes, Lemmy. Spaces where conversation is the point, not the product. Lurk first, then introduce yourself.
Start a site
See Getting Started on the IndieWeb — Level 0 options require no code and cost nothing.
Help one person
If you have technical capacity, use it for someone who doesn't. Walk a friend through setting up Mastodon. Help a community organization get off Facebook Groups. That's being a good neighbour.
The Good Web can supplement community — it cannot replace it:
The library is one of the last good-faith public institutions. It needs your presence as much as you need its books.
Passive social media consumption without output is harmful. A meta-analysis of 141 studies found consumption-without-engagement reliably tracks with lower wellbeing across age groups. The antidote: make something.
Anything. It doesn't have to look like a hobby. Urban sketching. Foraging. Fermentation (kombucha, sourdough, kimchi). Amateur radio. Bookbinding. Seed saving. Zine-making. Embroidery. Amateur astronomy. Birding by call. Terrarium-building. Beekeeping.
The point: you are making something that belongs entirely to you. The Good Web is built by people who make things — it's a natural home for sharing them.
Good Web social media is appropriate for local organizing; corporate social media is structurally compromised for it. Law enforcement used corporate platform data to surveil and track protesters; 70% of police departments claim social media for evidence collection. The infrastructure isn't yours. The moderation isn't yours. The data isn't yours.