The internet has fallen. Over the past decade and a half, online life grew more and more concentrated into a handful of platforms. Twitter. Facebook. Reddit. Youtube. And lately, Tiktok. Three of those services: Twitter/X, Meta (Facebook/Instagram/Threads/Whatsapp) and Tiktok have demonstrated their fealty towards Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X, performing a Nazi salute at the inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta has abandoned third-party fact checking. And Tiktok performed a stunt of an 8 hour shutdown, crediting Trump with saving the app in the US.
Reddit and Youtube are not quite so nakedly biased in the way they deliver their content, but the nature of AI slop and the fact their business models rely on retaining user attention means the quality is variable.
What I’m driving at is the users have lost control of these platforms. And the best way to counter that is to revert back to blogging. With a blog, you are in control. You can say whatever you wish and post whatever you want (within the law). And while it may for a while be yelling into the void, at least for me it is the change I want to see online.
I’m sick of enshittification. I’m shit of losing years of posts. I’m sick of missing out on seeing how my thoughts evolve on a topic and where I draw a line on various issues.
Most of all I’m sick of supporting companies whose interests are totally out of line with my own. This is a simple, concrete action to take if you don’t want to support what’s going on in the US and you don’t want to be in the hands of the corporates.
A blog is fairly simple to set up and if you want to self host on a Raspberry Pi – as I do – or a secondhand PC or a cheap mini one, it’s cheaper than a year’s worth of hosting on a commercial web host. And at least then you can claim your independence online.
