Midnight Pub
Striking mods
~alex
First Reddit, now Stack Overflow; moderators are fed up with the admins of the sites they dedicate their labor to. Unpaid labor, to be exact. After decades of witnessing social media platforms rise and "fall" – some underwent a significant revamp and shrank to a healthy size, others shut down permanently, few just became plain irrelevant to former users, yet still exist – and how people react to such things, the latter in particular has become ridiculously predictable, for the sole reason that too many people merely decide to be vocal, rather than vote with their feet in a quiet manner.
Geocities was shut down, despite Yahoo facing backlash; MySpace was no longer interesting to a huge amount of people and thus merely became a niche social media site again, with no one but a handful of people at best having even noticed that MySpace was completely gone around 2019/2020 for a while – I noticed it, at least. Another site named App.net, which was a freemium Twitter clone, kicked off in 2014, never really took off, and disappeared in 2017 with barely any coverage. Facebook – oh, you knew this one was coming – is repeatedly being pronounced dead, however its user stats don't reflect it in the slightest and, more often than not, people believing in the death of Facebook will just blink at you, once you point out that Meta also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which are tightly integrated into the Facebook/Meta ecosystem.
What about Twitter, you might ask? Well, it's obvious that all those boycott cries led to nothing significant, as well. While repeatedly explaining to "Twitter refugees" that "Mastodon", a framework to build your OWN social media site, is NOT a Twitter clone (and isn't supposed to be, despite Eugen claiming otherwise all of the sudden), the vast majority of them didn't stick around and either moved back to Twitter or settled with Instagram, TikTok, or even Tumblr, a "blogging" platform. Twitter is more popular than ever now.
... Now, will the boycott calls on Reddit and Stack Overflow change anything? Obviously not. In the case of Reddit, it's the whole "move to Mastodon" nonsense after the acquisition of Twitter all over again, now that some people recommend "Lemmy" as a "Reddit alternative". And Stack Overflow... is really no different from all those "hashtag deletefacebook" posts that pop up every once in a while. Both result in free marketing FOR those sites they complain about, not just those they try to advertise as "alternatives". "Bad PR is PR, too" – and it always works in favor of the big, established ones, never the small ones.
... Damn. ~bartender, anything that mitigates migraines, please. While I don't use any of those services, coming across those dramas on unrelated sites is exhausting.
alextheuxguy
Big changes aren't going to happen, I agree. I created a Mastodon account during the Twitter craze, and then promptly never used again. But I also never used Twitter again, and it did wonders for me.
This time, I created a Tildes account, which led me to discovering parts of the internet I never knew about, including this pub. Again, I might not stick with Tildes, and I might close out my tab here someday, but I know for sure I won't be back on Reddit.
I'll also say, this time, discovering things like Gemini/Gopher have given me a lot of hope. The internet I fell in love with as a kid isn't dead, it's just harder to find. And that's for the best.
protodrew
I feel that. I migrated to mastodon in early 2018 and its been funny watching huge waves of people come and go. More and more ive been shrinking and curating my experience with masto (muting the two flagship instances boosted post quality by 200% alone), and other web stuff. I feel like that is a common thread along people here.
tracker
Tracker nods along quietly as Alex continues his diatribe on social media platforms.
"I suppose that's a fair assessment of the situation at large. For myself, I've never had an account on any of those platforms, except for a few months on a Mastodon instance after which I deleted it due to the low signal to noise ratio. Perhaps it's just the old techie in me clinging to the comfortable nostalgia of earlier, simpler means of communication, but I still just use calls, plain old SMS texts, and email for ephemeral communication with the world. Anything that I want to persist for future reference, I prefer to host on Gemini and usually proxy to the web. The communities that embrace these slower platforms just seem a lot more genuine and invested in their conversations than the lightning-fast, doom-scrolling-driven communication models of modern social media platforms. Anyway...that's just my 2 cents on the matter."
Shrugging, Tracker goes back to his tea.
northern-ghost-bat
I like what you're saying, Tracker.
A decade ago I moved from the city to the woods. Just for a year initially, not sure how I'll do without the people and easy stores and cultural opportunities and all the mundane luxuries you don't notice until they're no longer available. I never looked back, and I wouldn't trade the tranquility I enjoy here for gold.
What you said inspired me to try the same for my digital life. Move from the overstimulating, feature clogged web, to a saner place like Gemini. Like this pub. Where you can once again dive into a single chain of thoughts, rather than getting your eyes bombarded by FOMO inducing snips at a rate that human minds just did not evolve for.
What a nice thought. Moving to the world wide woods.
Cheers!
tracker
Ha! World Wide Woods... I like that a lot!
Like you, I also moved from the city to the deep dark forest almost a decade ago. I live off-grid in a yurt in Vermont surrounded my forested mountains and next to a beautiful waterfall-filled brook. I love the peace and tranquility here, but being so isolated from humanity can sometimes increase the temptation to just dive onto the web and seek out spaces where people congregate. I've found that focusing on text-first protocols like Gemini and Gopher or trying to browse parts of the Smol Web with a text-mode browser like eww is a great way to find interesting little communities off the beaten path. There the people seem much more genuine and happy, and I don't find engaging with these spaces to be particularly addictive. Just like the Midnight Pub here. I stop in most days for 15-20 minutes, and then go on to other things. Anyway, I think it's time for me to head on out to my day job. I'll probably stop by the Midnight again in a day or two for another drink and nice chat.
Cheers!
petpave
Tracker, you must be Cal Newport.
tracker
Tracker chuckles and shakes his head. "I suppose I'd might as well be. It's not bad company to be in if I must say." With a smile, he takes another sip of his tea.
petpave
Not bad company at all. Been reading his newsletters for years.