My Mustang Mach-E has a physical key, or you can use your phone as a key, or in a pinch, you can set up a door code and an activation code to start it. The physical key still isn’t an actual key, though. It just needs to be near your car. There’s no physical lock in the door or the dash.

This is my go-to. I have the old DVDs ripped onto my Plex server so that I can hit shuffle on all the old seasons and just watch episodes at random.

I deleted my Facebook account during Covid. I wasn’t really using it anymore, but I really didn’t need to see anyone’s shitty takes on the virus.

I deleted my Twitter account when it was purchased by a Nazi shithead who has no business being as rich as he is for how dumb he is. I never really latched onto Twitter anyway, so that was no major loss.

I never used Instagram, but the idea seemed neat when it came out. Over time, it’s become less and less appealing.

I never had any interest in Snapchat. Still don’t.

Same for TikTok, but I don’t agree with the idea of the government banning it. The correct response would be to enact robust privacy laws, but that’s never going to happen.

I do still have a Reddit account, but I’m using it less and less. Pretty much only for some niche hobbies. I’ve never felt like Reddit fit with the other social media platforms.

I have a Mastodon account, but I don’t really use it. It still has the same problem Twitter did in that I don’t care about what’s going on there all that much. I want to follow topics, not people.

I did set up a PixelFed account that I use quite a bit, but only for posting pics of my minis and seeing other people’s pics of their minis.

Lemmy feels a lot like early Reddit, and I’m liking it a lot.

I don’t think the fediverse as it currently exists will draw a significant amount of people away from the larger social media communities, but who knows? My partner isn’t particularly tech-savvy and she was on Mastodon without me ever having mentioned it to her. She was also the first person between us to use PixelFed.

I feel like the fediverse in its current incarnation is much like the early internet. It has a lot of promise, but most people on it are those who are enthusiasts and/or idealists. If the fediverse becomes easier to engage with over time, I can see it growing in appeal. If the fediverse equivalent of a killer app or high-profile voice gets established, we could see some huge growth.

I think that one of the hurdles it will face is that hosting these instances isn’t free. With the centralized apps, they have VC funding they can burn through while they try to figure out how to monetize their service and to build it to be robust enough to be stable while handling growth.

What happens when a large instance has to pull the plug due to lack of funding, or they fail because they get hacked and/or don’t have working backups, or the person/people who run it turn out to have an agenda? How things move on from those disruptions will be very telling for the future of the fediverse. They’re all things that could happen, and I’m sure at least one of them will happen at some point.

I never vibed with Twitter or Instagram, so I struggled with both Mastodon and Pixelfed. It wasn’t until I started looking for content based around my hobbies that Pixelfed really started becoming interesting to me. That, and having the ability to be absolutely deluged in pictures of cats if I need a morale boost. Mastodon is still something that I’m having trouble getting value out of. I may just end up being a Lemmy and Pixelfed user.