https://www.citationneeded.news/posse/
"First it was LiveJournal, Friendster, and MySpace. Then Facebook exploded onto
the scene. Twitter came along not long after, although it would still be a
while before it integrated now-ubiquitous features like mentions, retweets, and
on-site photos. Google+ came and went. Then Twitter’s acquisition and rapid
decline forced many to reckon with their continued presence there, and many
either adopted or migrated entirely to alternatives like Mastodon or the
nascent Bluesky or Threads.
Most of us who use social media have used multiple platforms either
simultaneously or in sequence. Sometimes the shift away from using a platform
feels organic, and we just gradually spend less time on it as our attentions —
or our friends’ attentions — move elsewhere. Our accounts grow dormant, but
there is little in the way of conscious realization that we have left. Other
times it feels abrupt and jarring, such as when platforms shut down, get
acquired, or terminate our accounts, or when decisions by the companies that
run them make our continued presence there feel untenable.
When platforms die, there is inevitably community loss as the userbase
fragments. Some people move to the same platforms but never manage to
reconnect. Others migrate to different services that don’t interoperate. Some
vanish entirely. Each shift requires rebuilding, and the process of finding the
people you once knew and the communities you once valued is laborious. Each
shift takes its toll, and everyone has a limit of how much energy they’re
willing to expend on a new platform that will eventually, like its
predecessors, join the graveyard of defunct websites. And with the shift, old
posts and conversations are lost to abandoned accounts or, eventually, server
shutdowns.
As the list of platform options grows, this only becomes more difficult. When
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter spurred many to seek replacements — or at
least backup plans — there was a long list of reasonably similar alternatives
to choose from. Some went to Mastodon. Some who could get their hands on invite
codes went to Bluesky.a Later on, Meta launched Threads, so some people went
there. A long tail of alternative options ranging from Post to Truth Social to
Nostr drew in others.
Bluesky later opened its platform to public registration in February 2024,
about a year after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Some of us set up accounts in multiple new places to try to stay connected with
the people we care about, only to then have to grapple with the challenges of
having several relatively similar platforms to juggle. Do I post the same
things on each of them? Are some posts better suited to Mastodon, while others
feel more at home on Bluesky? How do I keep up with conversations split across
three different websites or apps? For me, the announcement of a new platform
with new features and new people now elicits less of a feeling of excitement,
but rather a feeling of “oh no, not another one.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
