social media

Where to find me

I’ve written a lot about social media and the state of it at various times, as well as my participation (or not) in various aspects of it. Most famously this piece from over a decade ago about why I don’t use Facebook. More recently I wrote about many of the different current offerings though that was pretty extensive and several months later I’ve mostly decided to focus my efforts and wanted to share my thinking, and where to find me – I’m not going to list every account I have everywhere, just the ones I’m actively looking at.

The old:
I’m @seanbonner on X – I was indignantly calling this Twitter long after the name change but I have to admit the X of today is nothing like the Twitter of yesterday, and essentially everything I loved about it has been replaced with things I hate. As one of the first 140 people to join Twitter, this one has been had to accept and let go of. I still have a blue check because at the beginning of last year I paid for a year, and even though I cancelled it a long time ago it persists along with increasing “your premium account is expires soon!” warnings, so I expect that to go away soon and along with that any visibility I used to have there. The only reason I keep the account is because CryptoTwitter – the community there – still hasn’t entirely moved anywhere else and it’s like this tiny pocked of joy and inspiration and friends and hope surrounded by a moat of bot vomit and trolls. I will continue to encourage everyone there to go elsewhere.

I’m @seanbonner on Instagram – I made excuses to justify Instagram while avoiding Facebook for a long time but the worse Meta gets the hander that is to do with a straight face. While this used to be a great place to connect with other photographers, the algo sucks and the new image format sucks and the ads suck and everything sucks so while I’m keeping the account for the name and will probably crossposts for a while, the future sees far less of me there. (Also I have an account for my noise project Drone War because again, the noise community seems to only be there at this point.)

The now:
I’m @seanbonner.com on Bluesky – I wrote before that this is the most Twitter like of the Twitter alternatives, and I think that’s in part why it’s gotten critical mass. Technically Bluesky is the front end built on the open AT protocol which anyone can build on so you aren’t locked into anything, and only you own your content and social graph (followers). There’s no ads or algo manipulating the feed, so you see posts by the people you follow. Using your own domain to verify is brilliant. Blocking and mutes work, and so far there’s a pretty low percentage of troll bots. The only real complaint I have right now is that the lack of a real crypto community there has allowed a ridiculous flood of long debunked 2021-era rumors which people with large followings state as if they are facts, to much applause and fanfare. So that’s a little gross, but hopefully it shifts in the near future.

I’m @seanbonner.photos on Flashes – Flashes is an Instagram like interface for AT Protocol while it’s technically also a Bluesky account, the content is more designed to be viewed in Flashes, which ignores text posts and beautifully presents imagery. Currently Flashes is iOS only, and it’s a single dev project, however they just celebrated 50k downloads from the App Store so I hope the growing popularity allows them to bring in some more people and expand to web & Android soon. I made a dedicated account for this app rather than just use my main, because I wanted this to really photos on photography and visual art, and not get sidelined by random news or drama of the day.

I’m @seanbonner on Telegram – This is actually my favorite place to hang out, largely because I’m in small well curated groups so it’s more of a bunch of private group chats, but that’s really what I want out of social media anyway – a good way to talk to my friends.

More privately, I’m @seanbonner.01 on Signal – in a perfect world I’d migrate all my Telegram groups and chats to Signal, and we’d all turn on disappearing messages and sleep much more soundly knowing we’re not being snooped on. Alas, this tends to be more for friends who are tech savvy and paying attention to privacy and security issues. (Related, I’m also on Session which is it’s own thing, built outside of the US but using some Signal tech. If you need to reach me securely and don’t want to use Signal ping me and I’ll give you my account)

While talking about this forthcoming post over the last few days a number of people have asked me if I’ve I’ve tried this or that app which they are really liking, and the answer almost universally was “yes, but..” the “but” being that it was yet another centralized app that will eventually have the same problems as all previous centralized social media services and at this point I’m not going to commit to or spend time building a following on anything like that. I’ve done it too many times and it’s groundhogs day at this point. The only way I’m seriously considering anything is if it’s decentralized / built on web3 foundations, because if I choose to leave I want to take my stuff with me – I don’t want to keep starting over from scratch.

And again, I’m on a few other apps which I’ve mentioned before I just don’t actively check them. That’s it for now, if you aren’t there yet come hang out on Bluesky.

The End of Social Media

Social Media is on the decline. Not just any one site but all of it. The entire idea. Traffic everywhere is down. What we once saw as a way to stay connected to our friends became a tool to be used against us. By advertisers after our attention, by politicians pushing their propaganda. Any passing thought potentially turned into ammo for haters years down the line, influencers and thought leaders trying to lead and influence our thoughts. People getting fired for likes and retweets, or executed for daring to speak out. It’s no surprise that these sites are less appealing than they once were. But where are people going instead? Private chats, direct messages, curated groups and gated discords. Back to our friends, away from everyone else.

Some of you might remember the running joke on Twitter circa 2009 where anytime anything bad happened we’d explain it by saying “Brands.” Why was the price of gas going up? Brands. Why weren’t my friends seeing my tweets? Brands. Why did the radio keep playing this song I hate? Brands. You get the idea. Thats about the time the site shifted from being a place to talk to your friends to being a place for brands to sell you things. Social media was exciting when it was a place to learn the news from locals talking about their own experiences, but that was quickly taken over by major media who wanted to capitalize on the attention. “That’s where people are, so that’s where we’ll go!” At one point I was arguing “we don’t need to say social media anymore because at this point all media is social” though at the time I thought that was a good thing, I thought that was a sign of news outlets giving in to our way of working, but it was actually them co-opting it for themselves.

At some people people started writing safety protocols for the younger generation signing up for the sites filled with thoughtful precautions none of us had ever taken ourselves. It took almost 20 years, but our worst fears all came true. I talked to my son about this and he bluntly said there’s nothing appealing about any of these sites, it’s just people trying to push shit on him and he doesn’t see any reason to ever spend time there. No one sees his posts anyway. He’d much rather hang out in a voice chat with a few of his friends. Thinking back to my own childhood and how much time I spent on the phone and how exciting 3-way calling was and even the introduction of Party Lines (though I was never allowed to try them) I can’t really argue with his logic. 

The thing that made the internet so exciting, the chance to connect with other people, has been turned into endless commercials and non-stop surveillance. That’s what we were trying to get away from in the first place. Writing this I don’t know why I still spend any time there either. If the algorithms don’t even let me see posts from my friends who I intentionally follow, what’s the point? Maybe I just want to see how it all ends.

I do find myself getting much more out of the private telegram groups and gated discord channels. Secret societies without all the pomp and theater, (not that there’s anything wrong with the pomp and theater) just people with shared interests connecting and hanging out. In a way, it’s what we wanted from Social Media in the beginning, but could never be done correctly by a company. We just needed a protocol that worked, a way to connect A to B without a need to jack up user numbers or meet profitability goals. Let Zuck and Elon and all those other fucks have the castles they built. They’ve become useless to us and we’re moving out.

I write that knowing it comes across with all the earnestness of a 7 year old storming into the kitchen and informing his parents that he’s packed up his favorite toys and is running away because he can no longer live under the oppression of their mandated bedtime. But I’m not pounding my chest acting like we’ll go build our own site and show them! I’m just saying that for most of human history people were able to communicate with their friends directly and it worked out pretty well, and for the last couple decades we tried letting companies be the intermediary to those relationships and it was a disaster, so we can just go back to talking to each other directly. Those sites need us, but we don’t need them. Sure there’s an entire generation or two that don’t know how to communicate without Facebook but the algo will get them too, or red pill them or whatever else causes their families to stop talking to them and they will have to pick up a phone. The change won’t be overnight, but it’s inevitable. RIP social media. You had your moment, and it was fleeting af.