Microposts

Wed, Apr 1, 2020

No fooling!

I’ve been working on my migration from centralized social media to stuff that I can build, manage, and own myself, and the next step in that process is Twitter-like microposts.

For a long while now, I’ve been taking steps to reduce my traditional social media use:

• I quit Facebook 5+ years ago

• I removed social media (and email!) from my phone over a year ago

• I stopped posting on Twitter so much as my first instinct, and greatly reduced how often I check for others’ posts

• I mostly stopped “faving” anything on Twitter (see this Micro.blog help article or read about regrets the creator of the Facebook “Like” button has for more context)

Don’t get me wrong: social media, particularly Twitter, has been amazing at certain points in my life, especially during some of the hardest times.

But a big part of my reasoning for these actions is the fact that traditional social media as an industry incentivizes — and monetizes — divisive, controversial content. Others have written about this much more eloquently and at greater length than I, but it’s something that I’ve believed in for a few years now. I felt increasingly guilty about using the platforms to communicate, with my content being sold as the product.

There’s still a bunch of stuff left for me to do:

• Make it easier to post (including on my blog) with Micropub
• Allow easy inclusion of media like photos, GIFs, and videos
• Track and display responses to my content from other people (for the time being, my microposts will be syndicated to both my Twitter account and my Micro.blog account and you can reply at either of those)
• Maybe implement likes and/or reposts as part of a bookmark-based link blog

I started to go down the rabbit hole of implementing more of this before even launching the part I have done now, but… there is always something more to do, isn’t there?

I thought it best to plant a flag and make a little bit of forward progress.

🚩

Onward!