Twitter X-Roads – Twitter Crossroad

Twitter X-Roads – Twitter Crossroad

Byrichard

With the change in name from Twitter to X, and with the destruction of a recognisable brand mentioned in tens of thousands of podcasts, podcasts, episodes and millions of web pages I was curious to see how Twitter was, with the new logo. It took more than 24 hours to change the favicon, and whilst x.com does redirect to Twitter, it does not do anything else than redirect to Twitter.com. You can’t see your x posts there.


A Twitter X Roads – Twitter at a Cross Roads


I was web disaster tourism yesterday and today. I was going over to Twitter to gawk, and stare, at the app formerly known as Twitter, being disfigured to please the ego of a billionaire. One of the things that surprises me is that people are still using Twitter. I stopped months ago, by now, and I don’t miss it. The community that I was going for either left, before Musk, or after he transformed the site. I noticed that at least one website called it the Zombie network.


Social Networks Without Ads


When you get used to the Fediverse, you get used to timelines without ads. You get used to timelines without algorithms choosing what you do or do not see. You see things as they are posted, and in conversation order. Without ads life is nicer.


A few days ago I noticed that a fediverse instance raised two thirds more than it needed to break even. This is good news for that instance as this means it can expand, if and when required, and it can continue for two more years, if not.


And Finally


I am happy I gave up on Twitter weeks ago, because if I had not I would find current developments depressing. Instead I’m looking out of curiousity, and I’m surprised to see that people are still using Twitter, despite the high probability that the site we loved to hate, is on borrowed time. I’m just a web disaster tourist, looking at the site, before it is left for the way back machine to remember.

Social Networks

Social Networks

Byrichard

Before 2006 we talked about social networks. it’s only with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that the idea of social media emerged. With it came a golden age of online communities where Facebook was for Uni students to keep in contact with each other, Twitter was to microblog about project progress and more, and instagram was a place to share images taken during the daily commute to work, sporting ativities and more.


At the time social networks were small, tightly knit communities that eventually wanted to meet in person, whether at tweetups, barcamps, and unconferences. The pandemic, and mass adoption changed these. The social networks unravelled and they became networks of strangers and friends of friends.


Threads Is Not About Community


Although Threads os over-hyped as a Twitter killer the real Twitter killer is Twitter. Until November people who wanted to flee couldn’t, because it had critical mass. It’s because of cascading mistakes that Mastodon even stood a chance of being noticed, that BlueSky and other apps were spun off, and that Threads was marketed. Threads is not a twitter replacement for the simple reason that it has no chronological timeline to see posts by the people you choose to follow. Threads, like Instagram and Facebook is just a glossy mag, where an algorithm chooses what you see, or don’t see.


Live Radio and WinAmp Analogy


Imagine that you decide to listen to music. You have two choices. You can listen to live radio, with adverts, paid promotions, a little dj chatter and music that was chosen either by the DJ or a musical algorithm. The choice isn’t yours.


In contrast with Winamp you have no adverts, you have no dj. You have complete control on whether you want to play songs, choosing each one, playing a playlist, or allowing an algorithm tho choose depending on your mood or most played songs.


Both fall within the scope of listening to music, but one is entirely controlled by the listener, and the other is controlled from above, by the radio station


How it ties in to Social Media


Threads is seen as a Twitter killer and the media love it but threads is an algorithm driven social media option where the user is not controlling their own experience. The higher ups are. If you use Facebook you see posts by strangers, not friends. If you use instagram every fourth post is influencer rubbish or an advert. The community has been weakened. I don’t expect Threads to be any different.


The Fediverse Alternative


By fleeing from Twitter to Threads you’re fleeing from the frying pan into the fire, rather than a bucket of ice. Twitter, Facebook et al are controlled by the same people, so by fleeing from one to the other you’re staying within the same sphere of influence.


In contrast, if you flee to the Fediverse, then you’re fleeing to the Winamp experience, where you are in control. You can choose which instance you want to be on, and yet you can chat with the global community if you like, or the local one. When I say local, I mean local to that server, not local to where you live, although if you had that desire then you could setup a local server instance for your physical world community.


The beauty of the Fediverse is that if you’re a blogger then you can add your blog to the fediverse natively, and have your own fediverse instance. You can microblog with it, if you like, or you can write full form blog posts. People can comment, like and more, and those will be mirrored on the blog, and the blog will mirror to the fediverse. It’s so dynamic that if you make a typo in a blog post that you have already published, you can correct it and it will propagate to your followers.


The Community


With the Fediverse, the more time you put into it, the more you will expand your network, and the more visible you become. You become visible, by chatting, commenting, liking and re-tooting and more. Algorithms are not used. Chronological timelines are. The more engaged you are, the more visible you are.


With Mastodon you don’t need to enrage people, offend them and more. Being a conversationalist is the only requirement. It really does feel like Golden Age twitter, rather than what we have had since 2008 and beyond. It feels like a worthwhile network once more.


European Intuition


I can’t play with threads for two reasons. The first reason is that Threads requires an absurd amount of permissions, from health, to spending habits, to browsing history. In summary it requires every permission that an iphone app could ever ask for. Europe said no, so in Europe, for now, we can’t use the app.


I browsed YouTube to see if I could find examples to see if I could find how different Threads is from Instagram and Facebook but couldn’t. What I did find were vlogs by people over-hyping the social network as revolutionary, and ground breaking.It isn’t. It’s the same pig, with different lipstick. To be clear, by pig I mean Facebook app, built to waste our time and sell adverts.


The Fediverse and BlueSky are more fateful Twitter competitors but they don’t have a userbase of two billion people. To join the Fediverse or BlueSky either requires joining an instance or getting an invite.


Mainstream Media and Social Media Control


Threads is being pushed as the Twitter clone and killer for two reasons. The first is that it’s brand new so it attracts curiousity so it makes sense to over-hype the thing that people are curious about. The second reason is that the people who control and own social media also control and own mainstream media, so they’re promoting the product that they want to win.


My Perspective


From my perspeective Threads is not a Twitter clone, or a Twitter killer because it doesn’t see any value in allowing people to follow their friends. It sees no value in giving people a sleek user experience without adverts, and injecting influencer ‘content’. I want to use a stronger word but will remain polite.


Blue Sky has taken itself out of the running recently, because it has seed funding from venture capitalists, and we know that all websites that get VC funding eventually get destroyed.


The true contender, in my view, as a twitter replacement is Mastodon because it shows the values and morality of early Twitter. It’s a network of friends of friends having conversations across servers, timezones and more. With time communities willm strengthen and expand and eventually true communities will exist.


The Fediverse is already broad. It has Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, WordPress and more already playing nicely with it.


And Finally


If and when Threads connects to the fediverse we will suddenly have an enormous amount of noise, and the cult of personality, that helped destroy Twitter and Instagram will destroy the fediverse if people are not careful. Threads is already 70 million people.


Final Thought


At the time of writing this post the fediverse had 13 million accounts. Threads already has 70 million. When Threads connects into the fediverse, the fediverse will be diluted and destroyed by Threads users. People say “but we can’t build a wall to keep people off of the fediverse. If we don’t block Threads, we will have no refuge from big tech. Remember, we left big tech websites for a reason.

Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Byrichard

Since 2006 I have been using Twitter every single day for several hours a day, reading up to ten thousand posts per day. Every time it failed I would know about it. Weeks ago I decided to stop using Twitter, so when it fails I read about it in articles.


I am happy that I took a break from Twitter because if I was still thinking of it as a serious tool, I would feel heart break every time it failed. I would feel sad about the limit to 1000 tweet views per day, I would feel sad about the disabling of Tweetdeck. I would feel sad every time something new breaks.


There is nothing worse than being on a site that is declining, where you see functionality degrade and then disappear. The death of hope is painful. I follow the decline of Twitter, but I am not emotionally invested anymore


Worry When a Customer Stops Complaining


There is an old saying that when a customer complains, they want to keep doing business with you. The moment someone stops complaining, is the moment you are in trouble, because they have moved on. It’s when people don’t give you a hard time, that you have pushed them to breaking their relationship with your product.


People Leave Twitter for Bluesky


The Reddit AMA breakup


I saw a headline today that said that Reddit moderators are thinking of no longer hosting and facilitating AMAs. Reddit too, has pushed its most loyal users to far, so they have decided to take a break from helping the company gain value, at their expense.


The Reddit AMA Moderator Walk Out


The Absurd Limit


Imagine that you’re a social network, and imagine that people love to use your network for hours a day. Now imagine that you decide to tell them that they can only see a thousand posts before they’re cut off. In theory that could be 1 to fifteen minutes of browsing, depending on how much time they spead on each post.


For a comparison Facebook and Facebook Instagram encourage people to binge, seeing hundreds of posts that are irrelevant, to keep them around, so that they see ads. Remember a social network benefits from getting you to waste time, and failing to achieve your goal. That’s why I stopped using FB (Facebook) and IG (Instagram). My ROI, as a user, had gone down the tube.


This reminds me of the joke, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature”.


Identi.ca


In 2008 we had identica and it was a great, open source alternative to Twitter, with no users and little engagement. It has survived to this day but it failed to gain enough traction to be a viable alternative to Twitter. Things are different today. There is a critical masss of users. This means that when social media giants misbehave people have somewhere to flee to. Users are finally empowered. We are no longer stuck under the thumb of Venture Capital Social Media. That ship has sailed and now we are empowered, once again.


Musk bought Twitter just as the social media bubble burst. Now that we have so many alternative tools to choose from social networks owned by Social media giants have no value. I hope that as Venture Capital Social Media implodes, so the world’s attitude to social media as an addiction declines. Social media is not an addiction. Social media is about people chatting with each other, nothing more. It’s the Social Media giants that pushed the Social Media addiction narrative, to behave immoraly. I’m glad to see them losing traction.


And Finally


As I stated, at the start of this post, Twitter is a sinking ship, and it would be sad, if we didn’t have the Fediverse and all of its instances to replace it. We also have BlueSky and BlueSky will thrive. It has to limit new user signups. This is a fantastic situation for them to be in, because it means that people are looking for alternatives, in several directions at once.

Social Media Silos

Social Media Silos

Byrichard

Years ago we heard that Facebook was a silo. What was meant by this term is that FaceBook would pull content into its social network and behave like a portal, without allowing people to leave. It encouraged people to see the World Wide Web as Facebook and nothing else. For a while it worked.


Zynga and The Death of Conversation


When FB was young, and vibrant it was a network of friends having a chat, until Zynga came along. When Zynga came along it went from being a conversational website to a gaming site. It became a waste of time in the eyes of many. It went from being a way of connecting with uni friends and colleagues to being a source of time wasting.


As if that wasn’t enough FB was used to manufacture consent for the Far Right groups. It helped Brexit, it helped Drumpf. It even helped genocide and experimented with making people depressed. It never apologised.


It bought Whatsapp and Instagram so I stopped using both apps.


Twitter Requires a Login


Quite a few of the Right Wing Websites require a login. Some of them are even geoblocked to restrict who can see, and participate in conversations. Although Twitter was text based it was a web portal for many, for a decade and a half. It had become a niche website where people went for a chat, shared news and current affairs, and kept up to date with people and topics that interested them. Musk destroyed that convivial atmosphere, which had already atrophied beforehand, but he made it worse.


Required Login


Another Perspective


The SubRedditor Victory


Last night and this morning I read that Reddit has seen its valuation decline as a result of the protests by subredditors. I see this as a victory. I don’t care about third party apps, or other reasons for the protest. I supported the protest because I’m tired of social media giants and venture capitalists purchasing web communities, and treating them as cash cows, rather than communities.


Twitter, Facebook and Reddit are, or at least were, communities. Communities should not be up for sale. Communities should be alive, healthy and vibrant. They should be about conversations and connecting people.


This morning, and last night I saw that the New York Times has yet another article about how to help teenagers ween themselves off of their social media addiction. For decades I have writtena about social media as a lifestyle, as a modern way of socialising. For decades Venture Capitalist Social Media has told us “Social media is bad”, “social media is addictive”. If it’s either of these things it is because of the social media companies that choose to ignore ethics, morality and corporate social responsability, rather than because the medium is bad. Social media is a blank canvas. We make it healthy, or unhealthy, by how we interact with it. VCSM is toxic. There is no doubt about that, but that’s why it’s good for FB, Twitter and Reddit to silo themselves. Keep the toxicity within.


Valuation Decline


The Early Web and Now


In the early days of the World Wide Web we could pay for a server, and then we could install PHPpb and other web forum software on our sites and we could self host, or contribute to the communities that meant something to us. The same is true in 2023. The tools are better. We have the Twitter/Facebook clone with Mastodon, Calckey and the Fediverse. We have Kbin and Lemmy for the threadiverse, so we can join or start our own instances. Finally we have Peertube and Pixelfed as YouTube and Instagram replacements. The future is open source and crowdfunded. Remember that this is the natural status quo. The Social Media giant age was an aberation on the World Wide Web. It’s nice to see that it has ended.


Attract, Don’t Repulse


There is a paradox in the social media giants pushing users and developers away just at the moment when seducing users, and developers is most important. Remember that Jaiku was like Twitter and Identi.ca was like Twitter. Both failed because Twitter had more gravity, so it attracted people to it, and they never left, until a few weeks ago. Reddit, Instagram and Twitter are easy to clone with the tools that we have available today. Today social media companies should be doing everything they can to keep people from jumping ship. The social media giants are showing apathy towards their users, and their users have somewhere to flee too.


And Finally


Now that the Social Media Giants are making mistakes and driving people away I am excited. I am excited by the prospect of being able to join smaller, more niche communities, and bouncing around from instance to instance, rather than being stuck on one of the giant monoliths. Now is a time when we can build and experiment again, on a human scale, a SuperSoaker scale, rather than trying to fill a syringe with a firehose.

Podcasts and Social Media
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Podcasts and Social Media

Byrichard

When you listen to podcasts, and you read articles, and you visit websites you always see Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram, to name the giants. In every podcast episode you hear the guests say “You can find me under this name on this network, and the same name on that network.”


The Shift to CrowdFunded Media


With the recent shift from Venture Capitalist Social Media to crowdfunded social media I expect to hear about a shift in where people can be found. I expect that we will soon hear “And you can find me on Calckey at this address, on Pixelfeed.eu with this username, and peertube.social. 


I expect that there will be a shift in where people can be found on various websites and I expect that Twitter, Instagram, and other websites will fade away. 


Dormant


I haven’t deleted Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other accounts, but my eyeballs are no longer there. If something is shared on Twitter, Facebook Instagram or other sites there is a chance that I will never see it. I don’t want to use Venture Capital funded Media anymore. 


VC Funded Media is Declining


Venture Capital Funded Media thinks that users are addicts, rather than valuable users, and this attitude is why they get away with appalling behaviour. Huffman is the most recent one to treat his subredditors and redditors with scorn, rather than respect. Without the user community social media giants are just websites, nothing more. 


A Thought


Decades ago we heard “and you can find this information on Teletext or “and you can find this information on your minitel at 3615…”. Those days are gone, and those mentions are part of a different age. I think that we are going to see the shift away from Twitter, Instagram and other handles, to Fediverse linked accounts. I think we’re about to enter a new era. I look forward to it. 

The Diversification Of The Social Media and Microblogging Environment
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The Diversification Of The Social Media and Microblogging Environment

Byrichard

When Elon Musk bought Twitter he signed the start of the Social Media giant’s implosion. A decade earlier Murdoch had done the same thing to MySpace. In the end he sold MySpace for a fraction of what he had bought it for. 


We could cry, and bemoan the loss of Twitter but we could also look around, and see what has happened. For years I said that I wanted to leave Twitter, but no one else did, because despite all of its flaws, it had critical mass. It had the right diversity of people to be a required social network, for anyone using social media. 


Making Social Media Migration Attractive


With the purchase of Twitter by Musk, and the swing by Twitter to the Far Right, it created a legitimate reason for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands to jump the shark, to join other websites, whether Mastodon, Calckey, Facebook, Instagram and more. It encouraged people to simultaneously look for alternative solutions. It weakened the Twitter brand, but strengthened the use case for similar websites and products. 


When Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp we were almost stuck. It provided a reason for people to use Signal, Telegram and Wire, among other apps. When a social media giant buys a website, it encourages people to flee to an open source solution that is free, or at least likely to be taken over by corporate interests. 


Migrate to the Fediverse


It’s easy to keep looking at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and the giants, but I think it’s more interesting to look at the Fediverse, because the Fediverse is broadening and expanding its use-case. Twitter is not the first social network to be bought, and destroyed by the Right. It’s the most recent. 


This time, though, it feels different, because open source solutions are ready to provide people with an open source, community driven alternative that offers instagram like functionality with Pixelfed, and forum and microblogging with Mastodon, Misskey and spin offs on one side, and BlueSky and its own federation project on the other. 


Your Own Instance


For the cost of Twitter Blue we can set up our own Mastodon instance. For a small monthly contribution we can fund an independent server like calckey, which is part of the fediverse, but built on Misskey, rather than Mastodon. 


Recently I have been frustrated by something specific. Twitter, Facebook and other sites all had scaling issues, which they fixed and ironed out. Now Misskey and Mastodon are growing, and they need to fix those same issues in turn. We’re back to a time where, if we’re using Calckey or other instances they slow down and give error messages due to the server load being too high. We’re back to where we were years ago with the tech giants. It’s frustrating, although if Calckey slows down I jump on to Mastodon Social and vice versa. If one instance is overloaded we can switch to another, until things calm down. 


Fluid Transfers


The beauty of the Fediverse, compared to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is that if you get tired with one community you can export several CSV files from one instance and pull them into the next. You don’t have to use one server, if the community is not for you. Within a few minutes you can transfer hundreds, if not thousands, of the people you’re following. The instance doesn’t care where you’re following from. It’s only when you get answers or interactions that it matters. 


Towards a Decline of the Centralised Social Network


The Far Right, by controlling Facebook, Instagram, Meta and Twitter has encouraged people to drop their platforms, in favour of Fediverse and BlueSky compatible social networks.  They have shown, for the last time, that centralised ownership of a social network is bad, and that now is the time to move back towards the social web. Now is the time to go back to community driven, open source solutions. Tech giants, and their shareholders have devalued themselves. Rationally no social network should ever sell itself for billions, for two reasons. The first is that they’re breaking the implied contract they have with their user base. The second is that users can migrate within a matter of weeks, days, or even hours. 


When Twitter agreed to be sold to an individual it destroyed the Twitter community’s trust in the board of directors, and by juxtaposition, all social media giants. Twitter was the last giant I was still using. Now that I’m gone, it’s open source, and community funded social networks from now on. 

On The Value of Not Being Anonymous on Social Media

On The Value of Not Being Anonymous on Social Media

Byrichard

For years I felt comfortable tweeting as myself for two reasons. The fist reason is that we met up so often than tweeting under my actual name made sense. The second reason is that it was a network of friends of friends and we were seldom, if ever trolled. That changed during the pandemic so I chose to tweet under one pseudonym, before another, and then another. The reason is that I felt that I was going to be attacked by people online, if they knew who I was. 


I decided to create an account on Calckey where I was posting as myself. until I was trolled and insulted. I blocked the offending account but I also created an anonymous account, in reaction to this attack. It’s not that I want to be anonymous. It’s that I don’t feel comfortable tweeting as myself on a network, and in an era, where trolling is normal. I am on social media for conversations that will eventually encourage me to meet people in person. 


I believe that this is a coming of age thing. The Fediverse is still young and growing up. Communities are not mature. Communities are not yet networks of friends of friends so the social bonds that would normally keep people civil have not been formed yet. I believe that, in time, this will come. For now I think it makes sense to be anonymous, until we find a community where we feel safe being ourselves, rather than pseudonyms. 


On Reddit, Quora, Twitter and Facebook you respond to posts by strangers. Every time that those strangers attack us, is a time we feel that we should not speak to “strangers” on the web. It consolidates the habit of lurking, rather than participating. I don’t want to lurk, I just want to insulate the real me from internet trolls, in case it escalates and potentially damages my reputation. Remember, a troll is anonymous, but their trolling can have real life consequences, if we are not anonymous. 

The Paradox of Instagram’s Twitter
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The Paradox of Instagram’s Twitter

Byrichard

Within the last two days I saw a headline that is either amusing or tragic. The headline is that Instagram is creating a twitter clone, or even a Twitter competitor. This is amusing, or tragic, because Twitter and Facebook have always been competitors. You had the network of strangers that became friends, with Twitter, and the network of uni friends that became estranged years after graduating with Facebook. 


Chronological


Both of them had chronological timelines with people conversing with each other. One was about events, pictures and more, and the other was about chatting, between tweetups. 


Facebook and Twitter Are Now the Same


The notion that Instagram would have a twitter clone, today, is ludicrous because Facebook and Twitter are the same thing. Facebook owns Instagram, so the notion that Instagram needs a competitor to Twitter is ironic, since Twitter and Facebook are now the same thing. I could develop the idea further but won’t.


The Rush to Rescue the Shipwrecked


Twitter is having a Titanic moment and nearby ships (social networking solutions) are rushing on to recover all the people in life boats or floating in the water. That rush is paradoxical, since it has expanded social media once again, to become a network of networks, rather than a monolith. 


The Fediverse


I think that the Fediverse offers the best solution because it offers plenty of instances that can focus either on specific niches, or just host accounts, and people can look for like-minded posts across the networks.


Contributions and Instance Specific Adverts


I saw something about people wanting to advertise on the Fediverse and I don’t think they should, especially not in the main feed. To do so would be to destroy what the fediverse is. A network of networks of people conversing. We can contribute financially to the instances we’re using, to help cover costs. For instances that are more popular, and more expensive to run the solution would be to have ads that show up only within that instance. It should be for the community to decide whether they want ads, or donation covered costs. 


Twitter and Facebook Are Clones Already


Seven or eight years ago when you looked at Twitter you would see twenty to thirty tweets with shortened URLs. Over the years individual tweets were given images, and animated gifs, and eventually videos. They even began to take up an entire screen height for just one tweet. Over the last decade and a half Twitter and Facebook became the same thing. The idea that Instagram is cloning Twitter, when Twitter cloned Facebook, and Jaiku, is absurd. 


Meta Chat Options


To illustrate how absurd the “Twitter clone” idea is look at Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even Facebook. They’re all conversation tools, some for private groups, others for public groups, and others for friends, families, professional circles, hobby circles and more. Instagram Twitter is, yet another conversation tool. 


The Consequences


Twitter stopped having a unique selling point years ago. What made Twitter was the community. By destroying that community feeling Musk encouraged people to spread to other social networks. People are trying to clone Twitter, but most social apps are the same today. A timeline with people sharing videos, photos, articles and more. 


And Finally


Instagram is now part of Meta, and Meta destroyed its reputation without ever apologising for its mistakes. I will not use Instagram’s “twitter” for the simple reason that I do not use any Meta products because I do not trust them not to play social engineering experiments, yet again. Meta takes social networks, and turns them into boring glossy magazines, rather than networks of friends of friends. Facebook was demonstrated to be untrustworthy and never worked to fix its reputation. 

On Mastodon Niches

On Mastodon Niches

Byrichard

Mastodon is a federated social network where people can join a server, based on their interests in tech and more. Most people join the servers that are open and easy to join but in doing so we have communities that grow, without becoming communal. I am on at least three different Mastodon servers.


Instances


I am on Mastodon.social, Techhub.social and Calckey.social and so far my favourite is Calckey.social because that’s where I got the strongest sense of community. In the process it also showed me one of the unique features of Mastodon, compared to reddit, twitter, facebook and other social networks. That feature is scale. I don’t mean that it’s huge and growing. I don’t mean that it has a million users.
I mean that if I wanted to create a Mastodon instance for hikers in the Canton De Vaud I could. I could create a niche mastodon instance that is centered around hiking in Switzerland, and encourage people I hike with to join, as well as to attract a larger community of people who enjoy the outdooors.


The Big Four


At the moment Social media is about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, where everyone is thrown into a gigantic melting pot. The issue is that this melting pot is driven by algorithms and influencers rather than human scale social interactions. On Twitter, Facebook and the two others we are fighting to be heard. On Mastodon, if we find the right instance, we are heard without having to become unsociable.
Instead of asking “Which server should I join?”, we can ask “Which community do I want to be part of?”. This is healthier. This is on a more human level.


And Finally


Mastodon is not Twitter or Facebook. It is more like Wordpress. If you don’t like one community then you don’t have to stay on that server. You can hop to another that is more in line with your way of thinking. In a community where you feel positive you do not need to hide your name. I would encourage people to flit from server to server until they find the instance that they like. Mastodon is more like a web forum. There are hundreds of servers, the aim is to find the server that you like being a part of.

A Short Lived Interest in Substack Notes
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A Short Lived Interest in Substack Notes

Byrichard

When I heard about Substack Notes I felt an interest in the project. I liked the idea of a site where we could write long form posts on one side, and short form posts on the other. I liked the idea of having conversations with people and creating new connections. That’s why I use social media and that’s what makes social media social, rather than a news website or some other form of website. 


The flaw emerged in two manners. The first is when content creators showed their huge growth in subscribers. It went from being a social network to an influencer network. It went from conversations on a human scale to lecture hall, or even stadium monologues. It went from being about individuals listening to each other, to influencers talking at people, but no longer being able to hear and interact. It went to being a broadcast platform. 


The second flaw is the FOMO that is caused by giving people with hundreds of paying subscribers a verified tick. It creates a two class social network. You have normal people, using it as a social network, and the others monologuing. 


People like to say “You can use the social network as you like” but this isn’t true. This isn’t possible. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are aol about the influencers, rather than about individuals. It becomes impossible to find organic conversations because you’re always thrown into a big crowd rather than a small gathering. The result is trolling, but also solitude and loneliness. Social media should neutralise loneliness, not exacerbate it. 


That’s why I like Wordpress.com, and wordpress.org. With both aspects of the same project you have a community, without it being a competition. Social networks should be about conviviality, not a faceless mass. 


Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube force us to see what the mass audience people are doing, at the cost of making ordinary people and creators invisible. It encourages introverts to withdraw, rather than participate. 


Years ago I realised that if you’re an introvert, and you go out to socialise, you’re just there to flatter the ego of the extrovert that everyone is listening to. If you’re an introvert and quiet, or not as well spoken as others you are invisible. You will gain as much, by staying home, as going out. Social media has become the same. 


Back in 2007 I asked “But what about the ROI of Twitter and Facebook users?” In 2023 not only has this question not been heard, but the mistake is spreading. I’d rather work on projects than waste time on networks where I am invisible. 


Conclusion


By showing graphs of how readership exploded for some users on Substack, and by adding “this person has hundreds of paying subscribers Substack created a class system on their social network that I left Twitter to avoid. If Mastodon, Substack and other alternatives all have the same flaws as Twitter, then why do we leave Twitter? Why waste thousands of hours rebuilding a social network? That’s why I am blogging again, because this is an investment of my time, rather than a waste of it. It is an amusing paradox that the pandemic, rather than help social networks thrive, has destroyed them.