Recently, some influencer was banned from TikTok for some sort of prank video. I refuse to look it up, it just crossed my RSS feed and it sparked the idea behind this article. Many such cases.
The thing about social platforms is that you do not own anything at all. You don't even own your own account and it can be taken down tomorrow. So, why then, would anyone take the time required to build a "following" on any one platform? The answer is that you shouldn't.
You should use social media as a distribution center, not a destination.
What this means on the modern web is what we should have been doing all along. Adhering to the POSSE principle: Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Your website becomes the canonical point of truth for all things you do online.
If you write a blog post, post it first to your own site, then you can post it on Medium, Dev.to, Hackernoon, Substack, whatever. If you post a tweet, write it first in microblog format on your site, then send it to Twitter (I will never call it "X"), Mastodon, Fedi, whatever. If you post video (Youtube, Odysee, Rumble) or photos (Instagram, Pixelfed), well, same thing!
This can be automated using APIs for all the various platforms, scheduling, and making it tremendously easy for people to follow along.
You are not "giving up" the network effect, you are rather creating a Point of Truth where that network can go.
What this ends up being is a place where you exist everywhere, but your home is where people can go to find you. You don't have to "give people your instagram handle", you can send people to your website, and that is where they will find all the latest updates in your life. Couple this with a newsletter and RSS feed, and you will be on the radar of those that care to have you on their radar.
You don't get to choose if your post gets seen on any platform, but via RSS, people will see you. You don't get to choose if what you say is deserving of a ban on any platform - but that shouldn't matter, because you own the platform that matters.
As "AI" is getting more and more integrated into the web, the less I think people want to participate in that web. The more they value real and authentic connection, the more they value real people on the other end of the wire. We are moving ever increasingly to the web of the 90s/00s, where there are more backlinks (search engines are unuseable in many cases), more sharing, more pushing other people's content. So, now is the time. Get a website, set up a blog, and own the means of production. Become decentralized by being centralized on your own platform.
As always, God bless, and until next time.
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