If you’re one of those people lamenting the departure of Skype, I’m sure you have good memories on the web. Maybe you’re still getting over an ex, from over a decade ago; maybe you miss some sexy times, explicit shit, unhinged and proud. Then somehow you stumbled upon some terms of service bullshit, and you realized they could be enforced any time. Uh oh. Even if you deleted your account, they’d have the record, you’d learn. Is that the end of your life?

It might have been the end of your naiveté. As you got more and more informed, you started to become a lot more familiar with certain descriptions of behaviors and with the evolution of internet terminology, along with projects of law and definitions of kinds of content and language. The big platforms had the bigger purpose of offering world-scale products for the entire population, and they had to draw the line somewhere. But let’s face it: we moved on. Can you say where to?

You might wanna point out that Instagram isn’t even a thing anymore. It is. It’s the biggest social platform on the planet. But compared to TikTok, it hasn’t seen the same amount of activity. Does that mean you’re going to decide you wanna populate TikTok and see what you might find out and who you might meet? You see, there’s a question of age involved. And if you were wondering where people went to, it’s worth thinking about your focus groups. TikTok is where the kids learned about social media, in a weird phenomenon motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not where adults went. And it might be clarifying to look at LinkedIn and see what the stakes are around there. There’s a clear segregation. And few people have been made aware of this.

Marketers have, but they’ve decided to put Gen Z to lead every brand. More and more, we have child-like representations of popular products and heavily edited, or rather, completely casual, videos to advertise for some of the biggest names across industries. Social media became something that the youth knew how to handle, while the adults managed the money. And that too was questioned.

But what about the old experiences that millennials had in the early stages of social media? You know, when we made contacts with people through MSN Messenger and saved email accounts on a notepad file? What about the forums? And what about those peculiar meetups with strangers on the webcam — always, no matter where you looked or what you did, populated with some of the dumbest and still persistent forms of trolling that the internet has ever seen?

I think I have a duty to raise awareness about certain issues. I could, in the best interest of journalism, talk about how platforms like Thundr and Ometv have been used, and what I’ve observed. But it’s impossible for me to have access to the same bulks of data as the people running operations on these websites (which, I believe, are also mobile apps), and the experience is particularly concerning. It isn’t hot to go on Thundr. It’s a huge waste of time — and an invitation to social vulnerability, with a hint of criminal intent.

Ometv is a platform that has 350 thousand people online at the same time, in a big chatroom where, supposedly, it’s all very democratic, and we keep optimism high. We exchange thoughts, we learn about each other, and we restore our faith in humanity. Right? Well, after seeing the number of people who, despite having their Google accounts associated with their image, hide themselves on camera, you start to wonder what the point is. Then you read the terms. It seems that there were prerogatives which made the feasibility of the operations dependent on a series of prohibitions. Such as: nobody shirtless; nobody showing just their lips on camera; of course, no nudity; no symbols of violence, and so forth.

Thundr is a little more complicated. The website uses real time AI to monitor every interaction, and recently started to indicate when a person could be using a recorded stream to simulate the webcam, but they still miss really old scams (I mean, REALLY old). It’s not impossible to bump into a person who displays a version of the infamous “points game”, or even positions the camera to another device, where pornography is broadcasted (any kind, if you take the hint). And what about consenting people who want to have a sexual interaction? Well, it seems that the world leaders are not embracing that at all — but they favor the massive prostitution model which imperils millions of people and strips them away of basic civil protections, in the name of an ambassador title.

For what it’s worth, the porn industry has at least one person who can formulate complete sentences and knows punctuation: Alex Kekesi, from Hungarian origins, running operations from the firm Aylo, which is Canadian, just like the former enterprise Mindgeek, owner of Pornhub and its suite of products and experiences. It seems that women’s empowerment is a solid, worthwhile concept to stand on and base your work around; but what about men, I wonder? In today’s world, it seems that talking about the difficulties that men face has become taboo, in a wild inversion of standards, explained well by few and confronted by countless. If, historically, women have been victims of abuse and oppression, it follows that creating a better world would involve trying to compensate for that; but deeper issues, like opportunity in the workplace, good pay and good health, along with security and visibility, have been passed along to the sassiest women and girls instead of men who were trying hard (no pun intended) to showcase their skills and expand them, in the competitive corporate world as well as in the context of informality — and mind you, personal lives, which have a right to exist and a right to be forgotten, at least on the web.

It seems to me that the people working in UX and parallel roles haven’t figured out what it meant for all the people who exposed themselves on camera that they would have to own it, and it would be virtually impossible. The internet promised us something, but failed us. And we are seeing very cheap and even disturbing attempts to tell a story like some kind of higher ground is supposed to be reserved to those who have never incurred in webcam exposure, at the same rate that meetings at work are consistently more online. To eliminate sexual harassment, companies bought spy software and called it “common HR practice”, putting that on manuals. And the worst part? The GDPR allows it completely.

So what’s left for us? Certainly, not apps like Snapchat. If we wanna be freed from technology’s grip on our personal lives, it’s not gonna be the dating app industry either (although Snap makes room for a lot of interesting encounters, but they don’t seem to be willing to share their findings or explain their decisions). We need a safe space to broadcast, and we wanna be discovered. If it’s not Twitch, it would’ve been Tumblr Live. But they killed it, and one has to wonder what the platform would be (and profit from) if there had never been a ban on sexual content and the live functionality had stayed. Tumblr’s competitor would be professional cam model websites, but only as a feature, and since they didn’t wanna be known for that, they had to separate things — imagine the pressures, and maybe the bribery. What we still have is videocalls with friends and family, and if we happen to meet someone who has good conversation skills, genuine interest and an cool vibe, it might evolve to a more consistent cam meetup. But the times for sex on demand are over, completely destroyed by the AI who wants to keep it “respectful” but has all the info you didn’t consent to giving, unless you pay for an experience with a sex worker. In the grimmest scenario, but one that finds representation with many men, you’ll have to pay to have a simple conversation with a woman. And they think this is sustainable. In the meantime, your data is collected, sold and distributed, along with your passwords, periodically — but nobody seems to notice the pattern. This isn’t cool, because it isn’t legal either. And more people have to pay attention to what’s happening.