Do you remember MySpace? I do. I was very active on MySpace back in the day. Customiing my page, adding music, learning HTML to do cool stuff, etc. I spent a lot of time on MySpace, until I didn’t. Facebook came along and made MySpace feel obsolete.
Before MySpace and competent, stable browsers there was IRC chat and I was an active regular participant in a handful of chatrooms. I built friendships and developed relationships. But I eventually gravitated away from those chatrooms with the development and introduction of things like ICQ and AOL chat. IRC is still around but no one really uses it. MySpace is still around but it’s morphed into a curated space for the music and entertainment industries.
We’re seeing Twitter wither and die on the vine. It’s bleeding users and losing money. Elon can and has thrown tons and tons of money at the moribund beast but it will soon be nothing but a memory. As it should be. If you make room for and even promote hate and prejudice, in the name of free speech, while simultaneously supressing and silencing opposing voices, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that people are going to leave the platform. We’re seeing it in real time.
The younger generations who have always had Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. present in their life probably can’t picture an internet landscape without these behemoths dominating the skyline. People are leaving these platforms over the changes they’re implementing, or they’re outgrowing them, or they no longer serve their needs, as they should. This is the way it’s always been. The internet will never be pure and perfect but that doesn’t mean we should stay put when a social media network when it no longer feels right.
So, fuck Meta, and vive wherever I settle down next. Meta deserves to lose its influence and slowly die off. Because that’s the way the internet has always worked.