I thought about this recently with Instagram, when I got linked there as the ‘official’ information page for an event. I could see the post with the general information, but couldn’t read the comments to see if any more information or clarifications had been posted.
That was an event, where the organizers obviously wanted as many people as possible to show up, and Instagram was doing them a disservice in that. I wasn’t going to sign up to Instagram to view those comments. And my parents couldn’t sign up to Instagram. It’s too complex for them.
Twitter has been gone for the non-Nitter using general public for a while. So, at this point, if you’re not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think? YouTube, I guess. Mastodon would be an option, but it’s verging on being too unknown for non-techies, as does BlueSky.
We’ve gone from a time where everyone and their mother could publicly announce things on the internet, to a pretty big vacuum.
It’s going to be interesting what fills this space. Theoretically, even personal webpages might have a bit of a comeback.
I don’t see the problem with mastodon, people without accounts can’t reply, but it can still be used as a message board. It’s not much different from linking to a wordpress blog.
Yeah, for those viewing a link, it definitely works. I meant that it’s too unknown for the non-techies that would want to publicly post something.
Which isn’t to say, they’ve never heard of it, but well, if you’re not excited about technology, it’s likely at least an hour of work, to figure out how everything works. If they know people who are already on such a platform, they’re more willing to invest that much work.
Most things haven’t moved over there from xitter. So if I want to follow an author, a band, an event, or even a theatre or other venue, I have to rely on bot accounts reposting from xitter, which assumes that I even know how to do that. It isn’t something my mom will do without instructions, and even then it’s not something she’s likely to check or keep up with because it is not as intuitive.
The place does not have the followers to convince entities like I mentioned above to move there or upkeep accounts there. The TLA isn’t out there posting bookings and upcoming events/cancellations on Mastadon.
If you’re a customer, sure. But if you’re a seller, it’s about as handy for the basic “I need some form of web presence but don’t wanna make and upkeep a website” use case, which facebook, instagram and twitter are increasingly failing at.
So, honestly these businesses go where the people are and Mastadon also doesn’t have the userbase of xitter.or Facebook even in their decline. My kids school doesn’t update delayed openings on Mastadon. Because most kids, and a whole lot of adults aren’t on there.
Businesses weren’t advertising on Facebook when it was “theFacebook.com”. It took a while to gain a userbase that was beneficial to businesses and entities to post there and maintain accounts.
I wish I could find the article, but when Musk first started breaking shit and locking everything down, local meteorological accounts realized people could start missing important public information like tsunami and earthquake warnings, and they had no other way to reach the public than through Twitter.
Twitter being accessible only via direct links to tweets is still not an acceptable solution, because how would I know what the URL is for the latest Icelandic volcano warning (for example)?
Honestly, let’s bring geocities back (not exactly in that form). Anything that isn’t a throwaway post on social media goes there, and you can post links to it from all the social platforms for reaching a broader audience. Then there’s a place for getting the most up to date information about an event, that doesn’t require making an account, and the person putting the event on doesn’t have to make sure posts across multiple platforms are updated with the same new information.
Unironically Facebook is fairly reliable for what you’re describing. It nags you with a login popup regularly, but beyond that everything important is readable even without an account.
Huh. I don’t think, I’ve ever seen a public post on Facebook, but that’s probably the case, because I’ve rarely ever intentionally clicked on a Facebook link…
For me, after scrolling just a bit, it always pop up asking me to log in and no longer lets me scroll on the page anymore. It happens to me on both mobile and desktop.
It’s really annoying when trying to look at events or business pages.
I thought about this recently with Instagram, when I got linked there as the ‘official’ information page for an event. I could see the post with the general information, but couldn’t read the comments to see if any more information or clarifications had been posted.
That was an event, where the organizers obviously wanted as many people as possible to show up, and Instagram was doing them a disservice in that. I wasn’t going to sign up to Instagram to view those comments. And my parents couldn’t sign up to Instagram. It’s too complex for them.
Twitter has been gone for the non-Nitter using general public for a while. So, at this point, if you’re not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think? YouTube, I guess. Mastodon would be an option, but it’s verging on being too unknown for non-techies, as does BlueSky.
We’ve gone from a time where everyone and their mother could publicly announce things on the internet, to a pretty big vacuum.
It’s going to be interesting what fills this space. Theoretically, even personal webpages might have a bit of a comeback.
As a public, we’ve gone back to the days when the internet was a techies platform.
The difference now is it’s a techies platform Vs. a corporate platform.
The more convenient FOSS social media is, the less techie it will be, and the closer we’ll get back to the more open internet for all.
Until then we have an open internet for techies alone.
Thats really insightfull.
I don’t see the problem with mastodon, people without accounts can’t reply, but it can still be used as a message board. It’s not much different from linking to a wordpress blog.
Yeah, for those viewing a link, it definitely works. I meant that it’s too unknown for the non-techies that would want to publicly post something.
Which isn’t to say, they’ve never heard of it, but well, if you’re not excited about technology, it’s likely at least an hour of work, to figure out how everything works. If they know people who are already on such a platform, they’re more willing to invest that much work.
Most things haven’t moved over there from xitter. So if I want to follow an author, a band, an event, or even a theatre or other venue, I have to rely on bot accounts reposting from xitter, which assumes that I even know how to do that. It isn’t something my mom will do without instructions, and even then it’s not something she’s likely to check or keep up with because it is not as intuitive.
The place does not have the followers to convince entities like I mentioned above to move there or upkeep accounts there. The TLA isn’t out there posting bookings and upcoming events/cancellations on Mastadon.
If you’re a customer, sure. But if you’re a seller, it’s about as handy for the basic “I need some form of web presence but don’t wanna make and upkeep a website” use case, which facebook, instagram and twitter are increasingly failing at.
So, honestly these businesses go where the people are and Mastadon also doesn’t have the userbase of xitter.or Facebook even in their decline. My kids school doesn’t update delayed openings on Mastadon. Because most kids, and a whole lot of adults aren’t on there.
Businesses weren’t advertising on Facebook when it was “theFacebook.com”. It took a while to gain a userbase that was beneficial to businesses and entities to post there and maintain accounts.
I wish I could find the article, but when Musk first started breaking shit and locking everything down, local meteorological accounts realized people could start missing important public information like tsunami and earthquake warnings, and they had no other way to reach the public than through Twitter.
Twitter being accessible only via direct links to tweets is still not an acceptable solution, because how would I know what the URL is for the latest Icelandic volcano warning (for example)?
Honestly, let’s bring geocities back (not exactly in that form). Anything that isn’t a throwaway post on social media goes there, and you can post links to it from all the social platforms for reaching a broader audience. Then there’s a place for getting the most up to date information about an event, that doesn’t require making an account, and the person putting the event on doesn’t have to make sure posts across multiple platforms are updated with the same new information.
There’s Neocities: https://neocities.org/
Pair it with an own domain name and it’s a perfectly valid personal homepage.
Unironically Facebook is fairly reliable for what you’re describing. It nags you with a login popup regularly, but beyond that everything important is readable even without an account.
Huh. I don’t think, I’ve ever seen a public post on Facebook, but that’s probably the case, because I’ve rarely ever intentionally clicked on a Facebook link…
For me, after scrolling just a bit, it always pop up asking me to log in and no longer lets me scroll on the page anymore. It happens to me on both mobile and desktop.
It’s really annoying when trying to look at events or business pages.