Meta has turned into the algorithmic rage machine. Sure, I understand that people want to double down on whatever their non-evidence based belief is. Certainly that's fucked up. Facebook was bad enough. I literally see one in 20 friend posts now. Instagram is suddenly going that direction as well, and that I expected to be more about the photographic moments that friends (and celebrities) have. No longer.
More than a year ago, I prototyped an app to simulate a "social network," as we understood it to be like 15 years ago. It's rough, it's not polished, and it definitely has not dependent on app stores, but it kinda works. I never really followed through on it.
But just as I decided I didn't want to blog on platform a bazillion years ago, why should I "social" post to the rage machine? I'm already in mostly a read-only, post for history mode. Why don't I just do that instead? If my friends are using Facebook, I never see what they post.
The hangup has always been, "But FB or Insta is where the people are." But what if they're there but I don't see their stuff? At that point, it ceases to be useful.
If my ADHD hyperfocus works out, I can build this new thing. If it really works out, I can build out the FB import, which is useful to me because I like the historical "memories" functionality. The only issue is that the people aren't there. So I'm willing to give it away to those people for life. If it gets traction, I can open it up an ask for money, but it will never, ever, be about "engagement" or whatever bullshit that means. No algorithms, no public posts, just friends, in chronological order. If it has value, cool, if not, it's not different from this blog.
Now I just need the energy and focus to do it. That's really hard, when I'm raging over the assault on the First Amendment and the general fascism exhibited by the current administration. I'm already subsidizing my sites in light of the Google monopoly. I suppose we'll see what happens.
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