Going Old School

Meta recently announced that they are making some rather troubling changes to their "Hateful Conduct" policies, which led me to think once more about online spaces and ownership.

This site has existed in some form since the late 90s/early aughts – I don't remember exact dates, but I think I made my first personal site at the Media Lab in either '99 or '00, and I got this domain in either '00 or '01. I started blogging around then, as well, first on my personal site, and then on LJ (I miss that old community!).

Of course LJ was also one of the first sites from which I exported all of my content before shutting down my profile; the site had been purchased by a Russian oligarch. I switched to a self-hosted WordPress site and continued to blog there until replacing it with this one.

I've met some incredible people online, starting with MUDs back in the mid-90s and via LJ and Twitter. I've already met some new people I quite like through Bluesky. I believe in finding and fostering community via these tools. However, I have been and continue to be troubled by social media companies. I left Facebook several years ago and started a newsletter for friends and family, but I ended up returning about a year later because of local groups that didn't exist elsewhere. I also missed connections to people like with former teachers, most of whom weren't on other online spaces like Twitter or Instagram.

I am considering what to do with my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I suspect I may keep Facebook active for access to local groups – I haven't found a replacement for that yet – but I will stop posting. Instagram is more difficult to quit. I want to, but somehow, despite all of the changes, it has remained a space of good connection for me.

I recently wrote that I was going to stop posting weeknotes because they were starting to feel a bit stale, but I realize that the format that was supposed to make posting easy became too constrictive. So – back to freeform and unscheduled thoughts in my own corner of the internet.