So where are we all supposed to go now? / It’s the end of a social era on the web. That’s probably a good thing. But I already miss the places that felt like everyone was there.

I would say it's better this way for society as a whole. A splintered populace is harder to control. And I'm not just talking about some "guv'ment out to get us" thing, because they're trying to kill encryption and other dumb stuff like that already. But it's a lot harder for other people to spread misinformation if the majority of the population isn't centered around 3 websites.

Of course, there are negatives to this whole thing, too. But I think the net positive will be greater.

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For me, the "unfinishedness" of the fediverse mentioned in the article also makes up a lot of its charm - but I can see how this can be an issue for people who want their services to Just Work

I was just lamenting with a friend about how the NEW internet doesn't feel like the OLD internet of the late 90s / early 2000s. See, in the early days your entire web presence was on 1-2 forums sites, or maybe some IRC chat room. You went there as a whole person. Yes, maybe it was a Sim City 2000 forum, but it had a number of Off Topic boards to discuss cycling or movies or recipes or whatever fit that community of people.

Nowadays we try to only interact with smaller and smaller slices of people in the interest of getting more people using a site. Reddit is the obvious example but it happens on Facebook and Twitter and everything else too. You want to post about your typewriter hobby? Ugh, get out of here, go post in /r/typewriters. Oh your post is actually about fixing a typewriter, my mistake, post in /r/typewriter_repair.... oh wait this typewriter was made after 2002? You want /r/neo_typewriter_repair, which has 6 members.

Maybe your local community instead? Join a club?

That was a good read. It pretty poignantly sums up the last few years and the next few years of social media in a few paragraphs