In Defense of The Small Social Network
Ditch Facebook. Log off Twitter. The path to a better internet is going small.
A few days ago, I went on Facebook for the first time in weeks. What I saw was a site that is a shell of its former self, one that has become ugly and overcrowded. I no longer use the events feature because the invitations come from people I hardly know, and the events are mostly things I do not want to go to. I no longer use its groups feature because the political groups devolve into unproductive shouting matches. The only groups I ever liked — the ones where queers sent each other nudes — got banned into oblivion, despite being private. And anyway, those too often just devolved into shouting matches.
I have no use for Facebook anymore: What was once exciting and novel is now bland, overly-curated, and filled with anger and disinformation.
I itch for an alternative. I want to envision a better internet, one filled with more adventure and less hate, or at least one where I can post the content I want without being banned. But it’s hard to imagine right now. Facebook is boring — but what lies beyond the safety of its corporate womb is downright scary.
Take 8chan, for example, the preferred platform of the El Paso white supremacist terrorist, and many white supremacist…
