Choices and the History of Social Media

One thing I've noticed in comparing people who use alternative social media vs conventional social media is that in both cases, there's a fairly wide range of political beliefs involved. Since I think there definitely is a political dimension to this choice, I have to wonder if there aren't personal differences involved that influence this choice as well.

For example, for me I like to have as much control as possible over my environment. Given the lack of control conventional social media gives me as changes to remove user control are frequently made, assurances that users will continue to have control or that explicit works or political beliefs (particularly leftist ones!) will not be censored are frequently lies or truths expressed so disingenuously that they may as well be lies (ex. Tumblr and its 'we've brought back mature content oh wait we didn't mean we'd ended the porn ban you silly users' nonsense), I don't find it a tolerable fit for my personal needs any more than it fits with my political beliefs.

I also find conventional social media increasingly inaccessible and hostile for users as it becomes a place to sell as many ad impressions as possible, a place to be deluged by 'content', a place that actively discourages connection and community and contemplation in place of 'engagement', a place that amplifies the loudest voices and silences the quietest ones, a place whose censorship or promotion of materials can be used as a means to push the behavior of a site regardless of its individual's expressed politics into its executive's desired direction (ie. passive content consumption). A place that has quietly dropped even any pretense of LGBTQ+ support (again looking at Tumblr completely ignoring pride month in June this year and instead featuring this short-lived but incredibly awful fullpage ad).

Meanwhile, conventional social media has also suppressed in many people the spirit and willpower that led to users abandoning LiveJournal en masse with sentiments like this:

“The thing is,” former LJ user Cimorene wrote on their Dreamwidth account in 2010, “if you keep using LJ because other people are doing it, you’re providing the content that LJ is selling. You’re part of the giant ball-and-chain anchoring fandom to LJ. I don’t want to be part of that.”

For me, on the other hand, Tumblr was the first social media I'd ever had. I'd never known anything different or had anything to compare it to when, in late 2018, I learned they would be banning all NSFW material. Not only that, but they'd be using an AI to identify it. Of course, AI are not really so good at that. Completely innocent pictures of food or people's pets started getting flagged. I determined there was no conscionable decision I could make except to leave. Otherwise I'd just be part of the 'content' Tumblr used to draw people to the site, part of the reason they couldn't leave because 'everyone else was there' and 'all the alternatives are dead'. History was repeating itself.

But this time, unlike with the exudos from LiveJournal to Tumblr, new venture capital alternatives wouldn't be there to 'save' us, however temporarily. The environment itself had changed. The FOSTA-SESTA bill was passed and became law. Paypal, the backbone of internet finance, began dictating NSFW policy for any business that used it. The Apple app store began dictating policy. And advertisers, now on Tumblr too, could do so as well. So instead, many people went to the hardly better Twitter. Then, Twitter was bought by Elon Musk. And then venture capital said it would 'save' us again. But in their very conception, the new venture capital 'alternatives' that sprang up like weeds (eg Bluesky and Threads) now had many of their user-hostile endstage flaws built into them from the start. Whether it was special protection for hate speech and harassment of leftists, censorship (again primarily for leftists), or surveillance, they've started from the very beginning with an eye towards exploiting their users.

So I think I understand now, why the great exodus from LiveJournal to 'better' alternatives largely didn't happen this time. And that's because, for those who didn't ultimately settle on small-scale alternatives like Dreamwidth, it never happened in the first place. Tumblr was always a ticking time bomb by the very nature of what it was and what it stood for. Twitter was a ticking time bomb for that same reason. Both of them had anti-social and anti-user tendencies built into them from the start (eg. the conversational issues reblogs introduce and the issues with the ask format for Tumblr, and Twitter's extreme character limitation).

Some have made the choice to break free from the downhill cycle of conventional social media. Some will continue to do so. But many are waiting for a hero who will never come.