Abbey Asks a Very Good Question! What is POSSE?
My mutual Abbey (OpenBookShelf), asked on TikTok what “POSSE” is. POSSE stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. You start with your website. For me, I start with my blog on Micro.blog, but you can use WordPress too. You can cross post or “syndicate” yourself automatically to most sites (you can find this post on Mastodon, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, and Nostr) You can spin up your own social media sites like Mastodon (think Twitter) or PeerTube (think YouTube/TikTok) yourself effortlessly. My tutorial on that is here:
With Mastodon (like Twitter) or PeerTube (like YouTube/TikTok) where YOU decide your own the moderation policies. This is possible because you are running the software on your own servers. The formatting with PeerTube when it comes to TikTok style content is a bit wonky, but even that has a decentralised (meaning running your own servers) answer on the horizon. Presently, you can post short form video content like this
over on the Loops app that is very similar to TikTok.
All of it can be tied back to Mastodon (or any other ActivityPub ran social media site that is under your control. There are no content guideline violations (CGV) on Mastodon/PeerTube.
Abbey mentioned Substack. Much has been written about the controversy over there. The bottom line with that is that any platform that controls/hosts your content, also can control your moderation. With POSSE, there’s no algorithm to throttle your content, and you’re leveraging existing social media applications that lead people back to YOU.
With this strategy, can go as light or as heavy as you want it to. There’s so much depth to it. It’s flexible and fun, and it’s ultimately bringing users back to controlling their content. You’re no longer the harassed/censored product.
If you blog at a place like micro.blog you can expand to things like your own podcast hosting, sending out newsletters of your content, telling people what you’re currently reading
and more. They’re innovating with new & improved services all the time (like micro.one for example). The sky is the limit. POSSE opens up all kinds of possibilities that are centred in ethically getting people’s voices back to the masses without monetizing their work for the benefit of social media corporation’s shareholders.