With Twitter X-ing itself to oblivion, I wanted to share what I’ve been thinking about for a few months.
This new internet feels like the old internet.
I’m not talking about like 2010 internet, when social media was finding its legs and that first generation of really popular, successful content creators were getting their time in the sun. I’m talking about like 1995 internet, where everything was nickle-and-dimed and siloed into their own proprietary areas.
Twitter started suppressing mentions of other platforms to the point where everyone is talking in l33tspeak code again for thier “p@tr30ns.” Then they switched it over so you have to pay for your blue check if you want any realistic engagement with your posts.
Reddit killed off their third-party app support, which has made using it on mobile basically unusable for me - the whole point of reddit is you can customize your communities, and the official app does nothing but shove random other posts in my face that I have no interest in.
These corporations want to be AOL - the stranglehold of your internet experience.
I’m sad about it, oddly enough. I really liked Twitter, especially in the early 2010s, and I know it’s been changing a LOT since then, but it was still mostly functional until the new ownership change. And without reddit, I’m not sure I would’ve gotten a lot of attention for the podcast in the early days.
Of course this is the possibility of a new opportunity as new social media places drop in to try and fill the Twitter void. The frustrating part for me is that now I’m going to have to sign up on a bunch of them and see which ones pan out to being the ones that have the most possible reach. Right now I have signed up for a Counter Social, though I have only used it like once. I also signed up for cohost.org which has a very AO3 vibe to it. I kinda like it, but I’m not sure how much it’s going to pick up.
I’m still waiting for my bluesky invite.
I also heard a lot of people are switching to misskey, which is a social media site in Japan. It looks uh…a little overwhelming. But I’ll keep an eye on it.
Hopefully the internet will continue to evolve and remind these mega-corps that they don’t, and can’t, own it.