I’ve been thinking about various discussions about social media and free sites that do take some of your soul for their own profits. For years, social media “just worked”. I mean, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so you have always paid for the free services with your data. The ethical issues with these services have just kept on growing, especially recently. 2025 is the year of reckoning for me and my use of social media. I have lots and lots of thoughts on the matter, but not all are clear in my head yet. I am still working things out in my mind because some steps can mean leaving communities that I do care about.
For example, I joined a certain birdsite back in 2008, and I learned so much from people in the technical communication community and the accessibility community. I made friends online, but I was also fortunate to meet many of these people in real life. There was kindness and generous sharing of knowledge. I loved that place, and couldn’t understand people who didn’t “get” the value from that particular social media platform. I stopped posting there in November 2022 because the new owner’s antics disgusted me. I went to Mastodon, which is just what I needed. I never paid much attention to the other social media platform called Bluesky at that time. In late 2024, there was another large migration from the birdsite, and this time, I saw many people go to Bluesky, not Mastodon. It made me feel there was a huge community breakup where the majority of people didn’t seem to be congregating in one single spot. I felt sad because I saw or heard of many good communities on the birdsite that one person’s ego had splintered into many pieces. Still, those communities had value so I think they will survive in whatever new environments they find. The spirit has not been splintered.
This blethering brings me to my blog. My blog just celebrated its 18th birthday very quietly – no blog posts because my thought processes weren’t there yet. In this new year, I have realised that this is where I can put my data, as some people say. This is my blog and my data. (Well, I pay a company to host it, and I use a blogging platform created by others, so I am not handcoding and hosting it all in my theoretical and virtual basement.) Just recently, I have discovered that the person who started this blogging platform has gone into territory that makes no sense. So far it seems to be some very bizarre in-house fighting, but it disgusts me when creators have god-complexes and start playing mean. I am mentally not ready to chuck everything in the garbage and do some extreme pioneering with some static site generator or whatever. I’ll stick around on this platform for a while longer for now. Again, I know there are good communities working on this platform and for free! I’ll stay here for them, and hope that someone grows out of their temper tantrum soon.
So what am I going to do about the blog that has truly gathered dust bunnies for a while now? Ii don’t feel like sharing all my personal feelings for many reasons, but one thing I want to do is post my list of books read here. Then I will slowly cut my ties to Goodreads where I have registered all the books I want to read, have read, or am reading. Goodreads has community, but I have never invested in it like some friends have done. Breaking away from there is probably the easiest break I can make. Mr. J. B. will never notice I have gone, and he won’t be hard pressed to buy a loaf of bread from my action, but every little bit counts.
There’s a saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. This is me taking my first step then. Happy 2025!