The State of Social Media 2023

From jwz.org, which is a blog I've been keeping up with since 1996ish.

• Twitter: owned by Musk, a fascist
• Blue Sky: funded by Dorsey, a fascist
• Facebook: owned by Zuckerberg, a fascist
• Instagram: owned by Zuckerberg, a fascist
• Threads: owned by Zuckerberg, a fascist
• Post News: funded by Andreessen, a fascist
• TikTok: owned by the Chinese Government I guess?
• Mastodon: owned by nobody and/or everybody! Seize the memes of production!

He's not wrong. Twitter is basically a Russian Intelligence asset at this point. I quit in January. My account still exists because Musk fixed it so I have to subscribe to Twitter Blue for a month to get access to delete my account.

Fuck that.

Blue Sky and Threads I'm staying away from because no matter how pleasant they are today, they eventually need to show massive profits, which means enshittification is a given, it's just a question of when.

Facebook is Facebook. It's getting quieter and quieter on Facebook, but it is fun for keeping up with a few dozen friends that post regularly. It's basically a GenX chat room now. I need to accept that FB will never show my blog posts to anybody and just stop posting them there. My blog has been at the same address since 1998. If people can't be bothered to visit or subscribe I need to stop worrying about them as readers.

Instagram appears to be close to dead. Half my feed is ads or professional content creators. Posts from people I know and care about are few and far between. My once a month selfie when out with Michelle gets about a dozen likes from the same 12 people every time, which I guess are the only friends I have still using the site. I'm very close to killing it off.

I actually thought Post News had already gone under. Andreessen took the Mosaic web browser code from U of Illinois and created Netscape. He has done nothing of note since 1996. But all it takes is being in the right place at the right time, with venture capital, once.

Tik Tok may or may not be owned by the Chinese Government, but I'm pretty sure everything you put there is available to the Chinese Government.

Mastodon is thriving. It's like Twitter circa 2007. I enjoy the community I've fell into there, a mix of RVers, RVA folks, and assorted nerds that all feel like I do about corporate social media.

Of course, this site is still here, too. I put a log analyzer on it for a couple of months over the summer and was surprised to see a consistent 125-150 unique visitors a day. I have no idea who they are or how they get here, but welcome!

I saw several articles recently that state that the kids have all ditched social media for group chats and group texts. That is probably for the best. I had a Listserv with about a dozen friends on it that ran about 1998 to 2008. I was way ahead of the game. I probably should have just stayed there.

It feels like social media is ready for the next big thing. But that next big thing may be a big step back.

I'm launching Geocities2023. Who wants in?