what indie social media do you use (if any). If you do/do not, why?

[GlitchWolf47]

Hi I was just wondering about this

So like for indie social media, whats you opinion it and do you use any and if you do or do not why?

My personal opinion is kinda a matter of i like it a lot, in theory...

Like the deal is, i have accounts for a lot of indie social media like Spacehey or Blips or Vidlii (RIP Bitview) and Hjonk, but I feel like the issue is i will sign up for them and then kinda just not use them

I got through kinda phases of where I like to hang out online, or if I do at all. Right now im getting back into a fairly active phase and active on here,  but for a while ive been in a kinda innactive/only active in very cozy specific places. and like I feel like I have just abandoned a lot of these sites cuz I am way more active on forums and webchats (and my own site) these days so my accounts are just sitting there, and I dont wanna delete them but I also dont know what to do with them.

Like spacehey for example, its cool but I have never really interacted with users a lot so like idk if its worth keeping or not.

Does anyone else feel this way?

[MrsMoe]

Indie social media is a bit weird rn because a lot of them are blatant copies of mainstream sites (mostly Twitter), but lacking in terms of engaging features. I know making these places NOT addictive is part of the point, but the fact that they're watered down versions of something that already exists and has way less people is a massive hurdle for most people.

PI (Perfectly Imperfect) is good though imo! Instead of aping off a pre-existing site, it very much does it's own thing and has a unique gimmick (recommendations and media sharing). I've been using it for months now and haven't gotten tired of it.

[snufkin]

I've looked at several but realized I just don't have it in me to participate meaningfully in online communities or social settings. Forums are okay, and small Discord servers are about the most I can do. I just don't want to be on my computer that much, at least not to talk to other people. Unsure why — I think I have problems feeling a real connection through words only; for a conversation to feel real, I have always needed some level of realtime or face-to-face interaction. This extends to several forays into penpalling. With that said, I'm checking out Perfectly Imperfect and it looks interesting. Maybe it'll change my mind!

[GlitchWolf47]

Indie social media is a bit weird rn because a lot of them are blatant copies of mainstream sites (mostly Twitter), but lacking in terms of engaging features. I know making these places NOT addictive is part of the point, but the fact that they're watered down versions of something that already exists and has way less people is a massive hurdle for most people.

PI (Perfectly Imperfect) is good though imo! Instead of aping off a pre-existing site, it very much does it's own thing and has a unique gimmick (recommendations and media sharing). I've been using it for months now and haven't gotten tired of it.

Ya I know what your saying, thats prob the reason im not staying on there. I have heard of PI before but not researched it a lot (its in my indie social media bookmarks) so I might check it out, but like, idk I think it also just might be a matter (for me) of like, not liking how social media functions in a way?

Like idk, I like forums and SOME webchats, but idk why social media style websites stress me out. Like i think in a weird way its the fact that they call themselves social media. idrk my relationship with social media is complicated. I definitely prefer forums over social media.

but you make a good point, and I agree. Like a lot of the indie social media is either a blatant clone or doesn't have any unique features (and from my experince is also a bit dead :P)

[rolypolyphonic]

I think social media is structured in such a way where it's more about 'content' than people per se. Not even necessarily in a 'capitalistic algoslop' way (though that's how mainstream social media ended up being) but just by the very structure of what social media sites loosely are ie 'a feed aggregating posts from various people'.

As a result, when a social media website doesn't have a lot of people posting stuff on it, it feels very dead and unengaging, because most people don't really go on social media to interact directly with people, they go on it to see Posts.

I feel like this would be a problem with any social media website whether they were copying the layout/'reviving' an old website, or coming up with an entirely new design from the ground up: what the website 'looks' like is secondary to how many people you can get active on it and regularly posting on it.

Forums and chatboxes where the structure is oriented more towards directly engaging with a person instead of having the 'posts' as a filter/medium in between them are thus usually easier to engage with and maintain even with a significantly smaller userbase.

With that said, I also think it highlights a difference (whether in part caused by the website's structure, and in part from the culturally ingrained mindset we have of 'how' to engage with the Internet) in what people expect to 'get out of' a particular website. A lot of people use social media essentially to lurk. Plenty have already made criticisms of social media encouraging doomscrolling et al so I won't bother reiterating those, but from a more neutral perspective, sometimes you just want to go online to look at stuff without necessarily wanting or needing to say something yourself. It's a different matter with forums/chatboxes where saying something yourself is basically the only way to even engage with it.

Because of that, I feel like with social media not only is there a higher expectation for 'how much' activity it needs to thrive, there's a lower incentive to actually contribute to that activity, because social media website (indie or not) will attract a higher population of people who are more likely to view things without posting/creating/speaking themselves compared to forums/chatboxes.

Circling back to the original question, I've given a peek to nearly all of the 'indie' social media of the past several years, both the 'revival' ones and the 'original' ones, and I generally lacked interest in any of them for reasons similar to above. I mostly use social media to look at things other people have made, so ones with a small userbase are hard to remain interested in, and even ones that are relatively active like Spacehey, etc. tend to cater to a specific type of userbase that I don't particularly relate to. It's easier to engage with forums like this one where you're not going there to 'look at posts' in the first place.

[lakes]

This might be a bit of a stretch, but I use a lot of Peertube instances & have an account on Bookwyrm (a book logger/review site that's a part of the Fediverse).
If we're counting instant messengers, I also use Matrix, XMPP, and IRC. But the last 2 existed before social media.
I don't have any Social Media^tm accounts (read: microblogging) anymore. But my friend hosts his own fediverse instance & gave me the RSS feed for it. But I agree with a point made earlier that a lot of indie social media is just copying mainstream social media, but often with a higher barrier to entry and other problems.

[poesu]

a lot of them are blatant copies of mainstream sites

Oh absolutely. I don't like Mastodon copying character limit, for example. Some instances increase the limit, but not all of them can, like mastodon.art that I'm on.

Wafrn (copy of Tumblr) just pulls most of its posts from Bluesky and there's no way to block it afaic, and content from there is sooooo trashy omg. The owner of Wafrn is a pretty chill guy though. He often boosted my art.

Pillowfort seems like a nice place and probably doesn't copy anything, but there's not a lot of people.

Mastodon has troubles with moderation. I don't mean bad moderators, on .art there're incredible. I mean that there's no way to block a user "globally," like, on many instances that collaborate at once. Some trolls slip through, hopping from one instance to another to evade blocks…

harassment

…like the Jimmy situation, he harasses mutual aid hashtag users and queers in general, spewing religious hatred.

[close]

I've still been on Mastodon for quite a while, but now I'm only posting my artworks there and maybe occasionally checking up on artists I follow. I now don't have a smartphone and passively scrolling the feed on a computer that I have to sit in front of is bloody boring when I could do something far more interesting.

But my friend hosts his own fediverse instance & gave me the RSS feed for it

This gave me an idea to add the artists in my feed reader… hmmm.

it's more about 'content' than people per se

Yes yes yes. I've never managed to meaningfully interact with people on social media. I just… don't feel any motivation to? Idk. But on Neocities, Melonland, a personal blog, and private chats it's so much different. In this case I get motivation to reply, start conversations, just leave nice comments, etc. I already have more of a dedicated audience/mutuals on Neocities than on any social media ever. On Neocities I'm also attracted to cool websites with lots of style and personality to them, which entices me to connect with their webmasters. I kinda feel like I sticked with this forum because users can format their messages and profiles in any way we want. It creates hurdles like less readable text, but I'm not that impacted by it so I'm willing to trade it for more personality.

there's a lower incentive to actually contribute to that activity, because social media website (indie or not) will attract a higher population of people who are more likely to view things without posting/creating/speaking themselves compared to forums/chatboxes.

Seconding this. I'd add that forum/chat structures makes (at least me) it a tiny bit impolite to not reply, let alone not read, previous messages.

[Watanabe_1994]

I do have a spacehey, but I haven't modified it in years so over half of the css assets are broken on my profile page lol. I have been thinking of deleting it since I don't really use it at all and most of the friends I had on there are inactive or have shut down there accounts.

[Dynaknights]

I do have a spacehey, but I haven't modified it in years so over half of the css assets are broken on my profile page lol. I have been thinking of deleting it since I don't really use it at all and most of the friends I had on there are inactive or have shut down there accounts.

Yeah, same here.
I was actually pretty active on SpaceHey for a little while, but the gore accounts, and bigoted blog posts, constant trolling, and petty drama on there kind of ruined it for me (also because there's not a lot of people on there who want to do anything but lurk; not a lot of people want to chat). The biggest problem I had with it though is that a lot of its userbase wasn't looking for anything permanent; they just wanted to make a cool profile then dip. Maybe some of them will add a couple of friends or make a blog post introducing themselves, but not much more than that. SpaceHey started feeling like a ghost town after a little while, so I dipped, too.

I don't touch indie social media outside of this forum because I'm pretty sure most people who use those kinds of websites just make an account to lurk, post on more popular social media about how cool and niche they are, or are just there because they feel nostalgic about a long-gone website the indie one's imitating, but maybe I'm just pessimistic about social media as a whole. Also, I'm just not social enough for social media, I feel.

[Watanabe_1994]

Yeah, same here.
I was actually pretty active on SpaceHey for a little while, but the gore accounts, and bigoted blog posts, constant trolling, and petty drama on there kind of ruined it for me (also because there's not a lot of people on there who want to do anything but lurk; not a lot of people want to chat).

Yeah I remember for a few solid weeks there out of the 6 new accounts 2-3 would have gore as there profile pictures and something edgy as the username before getting banned under a day. I remember 1 person who I friended on there years ago was LARPing as a school shooter or some edgy shit. Its kinda lame that theres a good chunk of people on there that are like that.

[GlitchWolf47]

The biggest problem I had with it though is that a lot of its userbase wasn't looking for anything permanent; they just wanted to make a cool profile then dip.

Yeah your right about that actually. I think one of the reasons Ive abandoned my spacehey account is cuz i have a website now. When I made my spacehey account I didnt really have a website I liked and was new to html and css so I thought spacehey was a fun way to have a profile, but i think after a while even tho i made blog posts I just stopped.

i think one thing is that social media makes me more uncomortable making blogposts than a personal website cuz I know some people seek out places like that to stalk and be creeps whereas with personal sites you really gotta dig to find them. i not saying the whole userbase is creeps but its always a concern i have a why I don't really journal or blog about general stuff on social media.

but your write about the lurking thing. This is a reason I like forums and am kinda annoyed at some indie social media like Bliish is that they make it unviewable to people without accounts. like if you wanna view posts you HAVE to make an account and even if you can view some posts they continue to pester you about it. like I think if more place allowed you to see posts without an account there woudlnt be so many empty accounts for nothing but lurking (tho for bliish they did recently allow users to see the place without an account which is nice).

[GlitchWolf47]

Yeah I remember for a few solid weeks there out of the 6 new accounts 2-3 would have gore as there profile pictures

bruh how do I not know about stuff like this???

Like seriosuly its the same with Vidlii like i join and then go on reddit and see all these post about it being a shock video site despite me never having seen anything like that. Same with spacehey. like how do I miss this type of stuff

[rnottelovesowls]

i tried spacehey once... but i just couldn't get into it. as someone who prefers an onine conversation that lasts more than 20 minutes and is easier to digest, i've joined niche forums and never looked back. trying to keep up with social media feeds is tedious by design

people have justified the use of social media with "but everyone else is using it!" i know. that's the problem! good luck keeping up with a site that hundreds of millions of people are using and posting on every day. and indie social media has that same feeling, but reduce the user count by about 90%. what you're left with is something you're tempted to scroll through, just like twitterX, but with a lack of activity that makes it even more boring

idk, maybe i just have too much respect for myself to get into the "culture" of social media. if the user experience of both big and indie social media vs. forums and chatrooms has taught me anything, it's that we never needed facebook or twitter, and we certainly don't need them now

[Watanabe_1994]

bruh how do I not know about stuff like this???

Like seriosuly its the same with Vidlii like i join and then go on reddit and see all these post about it being a shock video site despite me never having seen anything like that. Same with spacehey. like how do I miss this type of stuff

A golden rule of the internet for seeing weird things on the internet is 1 thing: You gotta lurk more (but not too much you will fry your brain)

[Metropolis]

spacehey, 32-bit cafe profile, Neocities, and Bluesky. I am also on Friend Rewind now.

Honestly, I think Spacehey improved tbh, the moderation has gotten better, and I haven't seen anything bad.