RCsocial.net

Yes, but different. Threads, Facebook, Instagram, X.com (Twitter), Google, et al. are “free”, but have thousands of employees, huge campuses, and sprawling data centers. How do they pay for all those people, buildings, equipment, privacy lawsuits, congressional lobbying, etc.? They sell a product and it is you. They know much, much more about you than just the info you share in your profile. In exchange for your privacy and attention, their “customers” (not you) pay big bucks.

These social networking companies are private enterprises with their own business and extreme political agendas. In addition to making money, they censor people who deviate from their secular, Silicon Valley viewpoint. Christians and conservatives are often targets, but it can be anyone, as their values and aggressiveness constantly shift. Should your views on abortion, marriage, families, gender “fluidity”, euthanasia, politics, truthful news sources and many other areas differ from theirs (believe it, if you are a faithful Christian it does), you may easily find yourself sanctioned or banned for your violation of their vague “community standards”. When you use these services to read other folks’ messages, know that you are reading a filtered stream of messages approved by the tech oligarchs. The discussion is not open and actual truth is not particularly welcome.

RCsocial.net is part of the quickly growing Mastodon based response to these far too invasive and manipulative tech giants. It is a completely free resource without their gotchas. There is no advertising, data mining or censoring of Christian free speech. Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, profit motives, political and cultural indoctrination are not part of it.

RCsocial.net is but 1 community (called an instance) of a large group of sites (called the federation) which exchange messages. There are now thousands of instances (growing fast) with millions of users. This worldwide public service is based on open standards and not controlled by any tech giant. RCsocial.net itself uses excellent software called Mastodon. It is easy to use, flexible and a pleasant experience from both desktop and mobile.

When you use RCsocial.net, you will see messages from other members of this site. Like us, other sites also have stated interest areas (sometimes just “general”). You can choose to message and follow others regardless of their instance. It works similar to e-mail in that regard.

You will choose a username such as “Mary” and will then be addressable by others on this site as “@Mary”. Your messages seen here will be from “@Mary” and other users here will address you as “@Mary”.

In this example, your worldwide address would actually be “@Ma**@RC******.net” (you could use that full address here, but the “@RCsocial.net” part is assumed). If you wanted your friend Joseph over at theres.life (another site with a Christian focus) to also receive a post, just include “@Jo****@th****.life” in your text. Simple.

By default, messages are publicly visible. You also have the option of marking them as “Unlisted” (not included in public timelines), “Followers-only” or “Direct” (only to those mentioned, e.g. “@Mary” or @Jo****@th****.life).

Messages can also be marked with a “Content Warning” so people are not caught off-guard. For example, you might want to include some comments on a new movie which includes a “spoiler”. Be nice and mark it with a CW!

Finally, messages can also include other media such as pictures and videos. When you attach these, you have the option to “Mark media as sensitive” so that those who see the message must click on a placeholder to view it.

Oh — for those so inclined, you may also include an “emoji” too.