With 10 years or so separating the moment we all were engaging in peaks over Facebook and Twitter, these two networks are now widely and harshly contested. Facebook became a propaganda machine, and worse, a mind-numbing overflow of virality that blocks critical thinking. Defenders will always have something to say about tailored content, but they don’t talk about the money or moderation. Twitter, on the other hand, is now a far-right platform who advertises for candidates openly and calls out on wokeism, as if it’s a word, to call any resistance to technocracy an act of rebellion that might end up in a prescription from a doctor; but nevermind who’s sick.

There are, though, some interesting things happening. Mastodon is one of them, and although discussions tend to be hard to find, they will find you, and people pass on information and contact you like a normal social network would behave; except most of those people are tech insiders. Bluesky, Jack Dorsey’s new thing (besides the money networks), is not mainstream at all, and we’ve all just heard stories — about how ego dominates the place, and it’s for hardcore fans, not regular people who are trying to gain visibility. Post was an interesting initiative, but payment options, on this newsfeed update for socials, was very questionable and things got weird very fast, although the likes of Kara Swisher have put their bets on the platform.

The best initiatives on the web are not often talked about:

1) Patreon

With a mission to support creative work through donations, Patreon makes the web a sort of utopia that we want to be drawn into, but there are few people who actually know it exists and even bother to make an account. To participate as a creator, you have to file in some paperwork, and include banking information (nothing much, just your PayPal). You post, you present who you are, and people suddenly can support what you do because they think your idea will make an impact in the world, or just anything you do, because you tend to be impactful.

Patreon not being taken seriously is one of the most depressing stories of technology, dominated by Facebook and people announcing how to get rich in 12 hours, then some dogs, then some music videos. Like we don’t have YouTube or Spotify, and God knows I have reservations. This idea is pretty much what the crypto dudes were thinking about, expect it involves PayPal, and people are avoiding the tax. But PayPal was the solution everyone could find, from remote workers and employers in remote settings to artists, creatives and journalists, even.

With a donation to a Patreon account, you’ll be making a person earn in dollar. The value can be as little as 5 dollars a month. If you keep working (I certainly do), people will notice, but since hashtags were stolen by the spamming industry and nobody knows what the algorithm does until they’re offered a shitty, invasive ad, people don’t get discovered. And no, people who promote their work won’t follow you back. Patreon has potential, it has all the great ideas, but more people need to be willing to give, and if they’re not interested in journalism, as it dies slowly and painfully, they might not be interested in art — and the death of the artist is supposed to be always tragic, but we’re not comparing it to the death of journalists.

2) Linktree

Linktree took on an idea that Facebook had, originally, which was to list all of your social media accounts and associate it with your “real identity”. Facebook wanted to be the digital representation of everyone on the planet, but people slowly started to notice the process was absolutely flawd, fragile, and sometimes even dangerous. Linktree, on the other hand, works as a portfolio. You pick what you have up your sleeve that is your best work, the thing you’re most proud of, and you showcase it to people. That’s the idea — unfortunately with little transparency on how visibility translates into monetization and support.

Anyone can create a profile and also they can announce anything, with some controls over what’s being shared on the platform, but even sex workers use it to promote their adult pages. Maybe for that reason, Linktree is not considered to be a very “professional” website or reference; but the idea is brilliant, and totally outside of the box — the box being Facebook, and having a public Facebook profile that is, again, the digital representation of who you are.

Even the idea of being a public person changes when you have a Linktree. You can have a private Instagram profile, but a link to show. People won’t bother you, but instead, look at your work. It’s the perfect balance, but people are failing to see it, and the brand advertises itself as an extremely online platform for people who are addicted to social media. It’s just not the way to go. If they an correct that, and take some lessons from LinkedIn, maybe we’ll see a more interesting landscape for creators as well.

3) Tumblr

All the people saying that Tumblr is dead are dead wrong. There’s always content to see, the content is better, and there’s a lot to discover. Twitter literally copied Tumblr’s recommendation system, in case nobody noticed. Of course, they had to include a captcha that made it look like they were really serious about fighting misinformation, but I have no comment about that.

Tumblr Live, as I’ve pointed out before, is a place where people hang, talk about their lives and anything that’s on their mind, with no pressure and a pretty interesting filter on messaging, but inboxes can be filled with anything. Tumblr has a past it wants to hide, but the users remember what went on because a lot of them stayed, and they matured and now we can have a conversation.

Tumblr is 420 friendly, geek-friendly, poetry-friendly, and gives room for aesthetics of many. It can be a collection of small blogs, and it’ll inevitably be less serious. It won’t replace Twitter because it doesn’t want to, but messaging aspirations revealed by Matt Mullenweg honestly worry me. I just think that it’s a good place to find people, and definitely a better way to spent your time than watching girls on cam doing other kinds of stuff. The not-so-obvious competitor is Twitch, but they rely a lot on gaming, and Tumblr is about the hangout.

If these platforms can gain notoriety and move into the mainstream, resulting in losses for Facebook and X, we’re doing something. Last but not least, there’s Substack, a platform that’s sparking up debates that apparently can’t be published elsewhere, even on WordPress. Journalists took a dive on it, and the model of payment is definitely interesting (you can literally fund a person’s research if you believe their project is valid). More people should look into it, and to hell with X. Advertisers are already getting the hell out of there, the only thing that needs to happen is the music industry wakes up and says no to Musk. We’ll be waiting.

Additionally, a lot of people are speculating on the future of TikTok. I’m actually a lot more interested in the future of messaging apps and third party encounter apps. People wanna have conversations and meet new people on the internet, and what happened to Omegle is both a lack of preparation on their side and a sad reality from the userbase and how it developed over the years. Apps like Wink got banned from Google Play; Bumble, Tinder, POF, Badoo and many others dominate the dating scene; initiatives like Hoop and Boo are not being taken seriously (and maybe the former shouldn’t, while the latter definitely deserves investment an on-air time).

But what happens to the web is gonna be decided by what content creators can come up with. We’re talking to each other, though we’re not. If AI is responsible for sorting out the relevance of our commentary, it will have to be looked at with a fine scrutiny, and some people’s relevance will be questioned and their channels are likely to be demonetized. We’ll see what happens. Support the people you enjoy hearing from! You can do this to Participatory Fluency by following the Instagram and YouTube pages, linked on the menu, and distributing love and likes. There’s also a Facebook page, and because I’ve mentioned it, you can find it all on https://linktr.ee/partfluency.