People love to have their voices heard. Whether it’s an opinion on the current political climate, a scathing review of the latest blockbuster movie, or simply letting people know that we’re hungry and haven’t eaten all day, the ability to communicate our feelings and have people respond leads to a sense of acknowledgement and validation that we all enjoy. This is why I think social media has become so popular.
There are many benefits of this type of platform. The whole world can become your audience. It’s a great way to connect with people who share your interests that you never might have met otherwise. There are also drawbacks. Even the most mundane and innocuous statement can draw the most hateful and vitriolic behavior from others. You can build a following with your content, but inevitably someone will be upset with what you say. And sometimes that someone is the owner of the platform, and you wind up suspended from using the service.
Social media sites are open to the public, but they are still private companies. The constitutional freedom of speech does not apply to their rules. They have the ability to revoke your access to their platform at any time for whatever reason they see fit, or no reason at all. It’s a good idea to keep in the back of your mind that these may not be permanent fixtures in our society. They can shut down at any time. All of your content on them could disappear in an instant.
Because of the irrational behaviors of some social media platforms in recent years, many developers have begun to move toward building decentralized platforms. I’ve personally only used two of them. I didn’t last a week on Mastodon. It was very confusing to me and I couldn’t find a community I felt comfortable in. I also didn’t want to create my own. It just wasn’t for me. Bluesky is the other one, and I’m very active on it since last month even though my account is over a year old. It wasn’t until the current mass exodus from X that the people I know from Twitter days (I left a long time ago) finally started to migrate over and I could rebuild the network of people I knew.
What makes these platforms different is that users can create their own servers and host their own networks with the technology made freely available by these companies. We are entering an era where we no longer have to depend on an owner or a board of directors in order to freely find and communicate with each other. We can own that ourselves.
Some people think that the government should somehow intervene into social media in order to protect users from the potential misuse of power these companies can impose. However, it is my observation that such an intervention by the state could end up being more trouble for users than it’s worth. I’d rather leave the power in the hands of the people. We seem to be doing a good job.