Companies seeking honest feedback on their products should look beyond Facebook and TikTok to the growing world of decentralised social media, where users are far less likely to self-censor their true feelings.
New research from Washington State University (WSU), published in the European Journal of Marketing, suggests that platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky and Signal offer a goldmine of authentic consumer insight that is often sanitised on traditional networks.
The study found that because decentralised platforms offer greater autonomy and anonymity — rather than being controlled by a single corporation monitoring user data — people express stronger emotions and more candid opinions.
“In many centralised platforms, people think twice before posting because they know their activity is monitored or tied to a public identity,” said Mesut Cicek, Associate Professor of Marketing at WSU. “On decentralised platforms, users feel freer to express their true opinions, and that leads to more candid, emotionally rich reactions.”
The ‘mask’ comes off
To test how platform design alters human behaviour, the researchers conducted a series of experiments, including surveys and controlled simulations.
In one experiment, the team built a mock social network. Participants who believed they were posting in a decentralised space wrote comments with significantly higher emotional intensity and less hesitation than those who thought they were on a centralised corporate platform.
A further real-world analysis of more than 26,000 comments — posted by the same creators sharing identical videos across both types of platforms — confirmed the trend. Even when the content remained exactly the same, comments on the decentralised sites were found to be more direct, affective and expressive.
Surveillance concerns
The findings challenge the reliance of marketers on data from “centralised” giants like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. While these platforms offer vast reach, the feedback they generate may be diluted by social pressure and surveillance concerns.
“We wanted to see if platform structure truly shapes expression, and it does,” Cicek said. “Even when the content is the same and the audience is similar, decentralisation increases emotional expression.”
The researchers suggest that as these independent networks grow, they will become essential listening posts for businesses trying to anticipate consumer concerns and spot genuine reactions to brand decisions.
