It’s been a few months since I did a survey of my current social media presence. Some things have stayed the same, others have shifted, and the various major platforms are becoming whatever they will be.
Threads, of course, is the biggest alternative for people leaving Twitter. It’s got the built-in Facebook and Instagram user base, so network effects have been conquered pretty thoroughly. Sadly, it also seems to have fewer features than the other big platforms. I can choose between “following” and “for you” or the unlikely to ever be used “saved” and “liked” posts. I have a shortcut on my browser to the “following” mode, because that’s what I want – duh, it’s what I chose. As with every social media site that has a profit motive, it defaults to “whatever the algorithm thinks you want to see” mode.
BlueSky has a pretty stable integration with ActivityPub going, although it’s still missing basic reciprocation – comments stay on their own sites, for example. Maybe the integration will grow to the point that BlueSky is a full fediverse member, but it may be a while. What BlueSky does have going for it over Threads is the ability to curate your own feed into subfeeds, and make those “lists” available for others to use. You may want a list of all the best FIFA players in the world, or whatever – make the list, and maybe other people will think it’s a good thing. There doesn’t appear to be a way to bookmark specific hashtags, but it seems nobody on any site is actually very consistent in using those anyway (it’s kind of why the algorithm has become so important).
Friendica remains a footnote – I repost things to it, but virtually nobody on the fediverse is using anything other than Mastodon. Also, I can’t get to Venera (my Friendica instance) from work, which really reduces my interactions with it. The interface is also a bit clunky compared to Mastodon. Because it does integrate as a peer with all ActivityPub sites, if I could get to it from work, it may have become my go-to. I do chafe at the character limits of Mastodon.
Mastodon, which looked like it was going to gain an actual respectable user base, seems to have plateaued at around one million active users per day, across all the various Mastodon instances. I have been happy with IndieWeb, and I love how easy it is to interact with people on all the other instances in the fediverse. Alas, that terminology may be killing engagement for non-geeks.
I still post a lot to Facebook. I am aware that Zuckerberg is awful, and that his site has done a lot of dirty things. But, it’s where people are, and it allows me to post more than a paragraph in a single comment.
How are y’all navigating the social media diaspora?
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