You're Just Renting Instagram

You're Just Renting Instagram

A field guide to Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr, and the open social web, and why owning your corner of it beats renting someone else's.

Kacper Wojcik

A weathered wooden gate set in an old dry-stone garden wall under a rounded arch, with green branches showing over the top, no identifiable people and no readable branding, for the piece on open social networks beyond the walled garden

Photo Raymond Petrik / Unsplash

On Instagram, TikTok, and X you are a tenant: the landlord sets the rules, keeps the keys, and can evict you on a Tuesday with no appeal. The open social web is a bet you can own the apartment instead. Three families, one honest catch each:

Mastodon and the wider Fediverse: open ActivityPub servers, no ads, no algorithm, and you migrate keeping your followers. Catch: "pick a server" stops people cold.
Bluesky: familiar, easy, 41.4 million registered accounts, a portable identity you carry between hosts. Catch: it is a company.
Nostr: your key is your account, censorship-resistant, no company at all. Catch: lose the key and there is no reset link.

Your people are still on the giants, because the moat was never features, it is other people. Pick one anyway, follow twenty, and see what is quietly better.