→ The SNS Model Is Failing: Why You Should Make A Website
Off the top of my head...
- Instagram culls new profile traffic by removing "recent posts" tag filters and replacing it with "top recent posts".
- Twitter's enshittification was so bad that its reputation along with its revenue got topped and dropped by and under Elon Musk's reign. Ads Revenue Program facilitates ragebait under the new profit meta on Xitter, Say goodbye to any sort of personalized feed because its pretty much lost to bot generation by collateral!
- Even Google has become hard to navigate; you can't even look up an image of a video game character without coming across a disfigured generative slop of their former selves. This could affect legitimate archives.
- In 2025, the blend of private and public sectors has never been clearer; Meta goes MAGA when Mark and Musk join forces with American President Trump in totally gutting the constitution. Not just that, but Tiktok issues a country-wide memo praising Trump for reversing its US ban not even a day later (even though he was the one who put it in order in the first place...)
Yes, your online platform has been declining since and it's actually nothing new. In the blooming forever-period of the unregulated Capital Web, the user focus has now shifted onto slick branding; Youtube, Facebook, Meta, Xitter.
Online strangers have never been more strange and apart. You feel more defensive than you were last year in your internet usage. Maybe you've even become hostile, and assume everyone who disagrees in your posts is always facetious or trying to make a point out of you. What you're viewing is a form of platform decay.
What Makes Online Communities So Hard To Relate To
I was part of an online that witnessed a generational shift from the "The Wild Web 1.0" to web 2.0, and am currently witnessing the creep of Metaverse scraps. The internet sure grows quick doesn't it? Advertisements always existed, but weren't entirely obtrusive on independent sites like forums & imageboards. Internet culture was much more sincere and nerdy because the internet was only for the outcasted. You still had to parse trolls and hatepages (proto-ragebaiters?), but otherwise the internet was spread out just enough that there was something for everyone. It was... plenty of space.
Social networking only became a priority as soon as megacorps introduced the idea of impressions being profitable. People's attitudes became more ironic and impatient as 2016 approached and social commentary Youtubers found profit turning real life people into one big observational comedy (source: adpocalypse). Schadenfreude media is kind of built into every platform now.
The effects are still present as some sort of world-scale Post Traumatic Stress phenomena; people get insulted when you dare ask clarification on a post of theirs because now you are antagonizing someone on a hot issue that everyone should know. It's not their job to teach you such an obvious subject, and maybe you should've seen their last post instead of asking them such a stupid question and making them repeat themselves. Stop me if you've heard this one.
When did social networking become so... un-social? Why is communication so weaponized? Where do we go from here?
From A Designer's Perspective
I've been webmastering for a good chunk of 6 years as I thought learning a little code was a good transferrable skill to have as an artist. When I first dipped my toes into web development, I distinctly felt like I actually held a part of the space I've picked and played with. This page's technical viscera of brackets and code proved I owned my quaint, static website, and no lustful image of some online monopoly can change that.
Those who never worked with any sort of webstack don't even know this world or how held back they are! Some people my age have never even used websites outside of Youtube and Instagram. In fact Youtube and Instagram not user-unfriendly, they're designed to be user-hostile.
If you open your profile on any SNS right now, the basic user profile is restrictive as possible, once described by web archivist Kyle Drake as a "Stasi apartment building". They give you one customizable icon, maybe a customizable banner, and a customizable microbiography and push you to the sandbox.
And you figure that's all you really need to express yourself. I don't hate the less-is-more model because as a creator you'd want to place your content where the reader can find it with little resistance as possible; why complicate the walk?
What I'm actually worried about is how blank a page can be until we truly have control.
You don't have to scrap personality to have a sleek and accessible page. Visual design plays a great deal at speaking the unspoken in ways that text can't. When you remove the mediums an artist needs to relay a message, you extinguish an entire language altogether: the first sign of corporate rot. These stagnant block profiles may serve a "one-size-fits-all" appeal for casual users, but they're solely designed in the convenience of the corpholder.
I use websites like Twitter and Ko-fi (I'm slowly trying to wean off of Instagram), but anytime I share out a social presence, I give out my homepage because this is where I truly feel represented. I MADE this.
The floor and ceiling are only a few inches apart in terms of how much you can really tap into your identity, and your page is designed only with easier serverside moderation in mind. Even if you wanted to offset the formula a little and make your profile's background a sweet
Reframing Internet Usage
It's unrealistic to expect everyone to fully disconnect from social media as a whole. Online presence is now a must-have just to live. In such ways its forced the internet to mirror our real identities; our jobs, our schools, our local communities. Freelancers like myself need the cancerous-spread nature of Tw*tter to get any worth of their business. My friends over at "The Old Web" may poke a little fun at Xitter migrants, but the last thing I'd want to do is antagonize those who are simply playing The Game as they've been introduced to it as.
Ideally "The Internet" is and should be a navigational instrument. Websites shouldn't need to compete in a monopoly for The One Hub, and they certainly don't need another paywall or another subscription.
It's up to you to decide what you give and what you take from the internet, but would you let a corporation tell you what your limits are? Do your most philosophical moments have word limits or marketability? The moment you let corporations define the framework of your content, you've turned your human experience into the pill-sized bite that the human experience is anything but: a product.
→ Getting Started With Decentralizing
Webhosting
- Github Pages: Solid free host for static websites. What sets it apart from Neocities is git control.
- Neocities: Free webhosting service. Updates using the online editor. An okay gateway for those coming from SNS wanting to learn how to code HTML/CSS through the small community that comes with it.
- NekoWeb: I never used it but it seems like a fork of Neocities with emphasis on in-community decoration.
Design Guides
- 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People: This book goes into the psychology of your average reader. Good for those trying to create easy-to-read UI, bad for those who are fascinated with The Old Web aesthetic. In the latter case, ignore it.
Finding Community
- Reddit: Unironically Reddit is an okay forum site. You can curate your feed better than any other network of its size.
- Newgrounds: Aside its spotty legacy, Newgrounds has always stuck to its "everything by everyone," slogan and artists/composers/programmers have the equal opportunity to feature on the front page whether you're a new user or a regular.
- Webring List: Alternatively web rings are a group of websites centered around one theme and while its kind of a primitive format with caveats, its the best way to find niche sites in ways you can't with a search engine.
