The Answer Has Always Been Right Under Your Nose
By now, you’ve probably have heard about Meta changing up their “hateful speech” policy to conform to the wishes of the incoming Tr*mp presidential administration. This policy closely resembles the same changes Elon Musk (aka Phony Stark) made at Twitter/X.
Among those changes, they allow for some very hateful speech towards the LGBTQ+ community. Quoting Kate Knibbs, for Wired:
In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”
In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.
Further:
Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy previously opened by noting that hateful speech may “promote offline violence.” That sentence, which had been present in the policy since 2019, has been removed from the updated version released Tuesday. (In 2018, following reports from human rights groups, Meta admitted that its platform was used to incite violence against religious minorities in Myanmar.) The update does preserve language toward the bottom of the policy prohibiting content that could “incite imminent violence or intimidation.”
Here’s the thing about bigots and racists: you can’t allow them to breathe. You give them an inch and they’ll take a mile, in other words. When X changed their policy, it became a safe space for bigots and conspiracy-theorists to exist. This was not only because the content was allowed, but, because it was also promoted by the algorithm.
Quoting John Gruber:
I don’t want to make a hypothetical example. I went to X.com just now, and searched for “Hillary Clinton medal of freedom”. In reverse order, the third tweet in my search results was a congratulatory tweet from the Clinton Foundation account. The second was a tweet from Hillary Clinton’s own account, thanking President Biden, accompanied by a photo of Biden fastening the medal around her neck at the White House. But the first tweet in my results was from “Dr. Clown, PhD”, presenting an AI-generated video of Clinton transmogrifying into a fire-spewing horned demon.
Twitter/X’s changes left many to flee to other social networks, including Meta’s own Threads. Now, Meta’s similar changes have user at least contemplating the same sort of exodus. Nevermore have I written something more targeted to my personal friends and family than now. Companies like X and Meta don’t deserve our money, which they get from our attention and usage via advertising revenue. There’s really no better time to cut the heads off these snakes than now, with the exception of yesterday.
The thing about all of this is the answer has been right under your nose the entire time: the personal website. Some may call it a blog. Yes, it’s fully ok if this sounds very 2002 to you. But, know that personal websites have been thriving ever since. Mine personally has been active since 2018. But, I know of others that have been going for decades. The beauty of a personal site is the absence of all the clutter and influence of social media sites. When you site down to write, it’s just you and your words, not the words of the entire planet being shoved in front of you at first. I use the writing app iA Writer on both my Mac and mobile devices. I use it in dark mode, so all I see is a slate grey background and white characters. Nothing more.
The result of this is you begin to write or express yourself mostly for yourself. I relate it to living by yourself. Everything you hang on the walls, watch on TV, or cook is catered to your personal taste. You may have people over from time to time, but you’re not going to redecorate every time you’re expecting company. That’s having a personal website. It’s your digital home that you can decorate however you like, not how the HOAs of Meta and X decide you can.
So, the question may be how you can replace social networks with a personal site? Let’s go through them one by one, using Meta’s services in particular.
Replacing Facebook
What do you post on Facebook? Probably meme’s, links, and the occasional life event or photo. Scrolling through my feed, I see mostly political memes and links, given the moment. If you wanted to, you could post all of that on a personal site. Or not, it’s really up to you. But, literally every bit of content you post on there can also be on your own site.
Better yet, you’re not playing the algorithm lottery of whether your content is seen or not. For example, any time I post anything about Meta’s bullshit, it gets squashed. No views, no comments, no likes. This includes my own posts I’ve linked there. Post something about my cat, I get a little more engagement. Post something triggering, and that might get you somewhere too, because engagement means money for Meta. But, I would never really expect a thoughtful string of posts on Facebook.
Meanwhile, your personal site shows everything, in chronological order, with no filtering from an algorithm.
Replacing Instagram
Post a photo. Seriously. Better yet, tag your photo posts as “photo” or something similar and that tag will create a separate page with just your photo posts. Some people call this a “photo blog”. Which is kind of what Instagram is, right?
But, again, you’re not playing the algorithm lottery on whether or not your photo gets seen. I mean, come on, you’re not posting stuff on the “World Wide Web” to be totally ignored right? Why take that chance. Start a photo blog, like mine here. If you want to post short videos, do that too. This is your cyber-oyster here.
Replacing Threads/Twitter
These services are literally called “micro-blogging” services. This essentially means, text without a title. Yeah, you’ve been blogging this whole time, you silly goose. This goes for everything listed above as well. All of that is blogging. You’ve just been doing it in a web silo that doesn’t give a shit about you.
So, want to replace Threads or Twitter? Post 500 characters or less and call it a day. Simple. Even better, blogging platforms are getting more and more friendly to this type of post. My service, Micro.blog, was built around the premise. But, even the Wordpresses of the world are more accepting of this kind of content.
Distributing Your Words
Obviously, you wouldn’t post things online without at least even a little bit of an audience in mind. So, how do you get out there? One neat little thing personal websites come with (or at least should) is an RSS Feed.
Manuel Moreale has a good explainer of RSS. But, in short, it’s your website’s built in syndication. But using a feed reader, you can have a list of blogs (or other websites) that you follow. They update in real time, are listed chronologically, and are not subjected to an algorithm. My dream is to have a list of blogs I follow from personal friends and family.
If you’re wondering which feedreader to use, I personally use a combination of Reeder (an app) with Feedbin (a service). But, ultimately, this is a decision for you to make based on your tastes. So here’s a few suggestions to check out:
Beyond RSS, many blogging platforms do support syndication to social media. My site currently spits my posts out to Mastodon, Bluesky, and (for now) Threads. I would say 90+% of the posts you read on there originate from my site currently. In indieweb slang, we call this POSSE, or Publish on Own Site Syndicate Everywhere. So, if social media is really where you want to live, you can live there and read my words, as long as you’re not on Facebook and Twitter because they’re hostile towards indieweb practices. Besides, ew.
So, this blogging thing sounds good to you?
Cool. I’m going to list a few places to start. Some are free, some are paid. Note, if you go with free, I get it. But, you’re not really owning your content in this sense. Paid websites often go for about the cost of two overpriced lattes or that streaming service you’re not really watching. Here’s some suggestions to poke around through:
I hope this helps. Remember, there are no rules with having a personal site. Except maybe, “don’t be a dick”. Otherwise, it’s your playground or zen garden. If you’re a personal friend and you start a page, text me the link and I’ll be your audience and share your good stuff on here.
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