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I don’t think the Human Species was built to maintain more than a few dozen strong social connections and the weak ones are obviously a corruptible poison. I’m voting for micro-communities based on mutual passion (art, sports, etc.) and a lot more silence.

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Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 8, 2022Liked by Simon K Jones

I'm not sure that Twitter was ever about community. It was more a bazaar than a community. You may have had your little area where you shopped regularly but it was still full of random encounters and strange passions. A community, on the other hand, is something formed as a place to feel comfortable and at ease with familiar people. A community turns down the noise of the world; a bazaar turns it up.

Facebook has something of the same effect, though to a lesser extent. Its algorithms too are designed to turn up the noise. Substack, on the other hand, is more about turning the noise down.

But the corollary of this is that if you want to sell ads, you would rather create a bazaar than a community. Communities tend to dislike adds. A bazaar is all about rival hawkers trying to shout each other down. The problem, with which so many services are experimenting, is how to make money running a community rather than a bazaar.

In the end, if it is not ad-supported, then it is going to be some form of user pay. Substack has its own particular model of paid subscriptions, on which I am currently freeloading because I haven't turned on paid subscriptions for my newsletter, nor have I paid to subscribe to anyone else's.

Musk may be looking at this transition from bazaar to community with his $8 verified user plan. After all, platforms that depend on advertising are captive to the agenda of their advertisers. That has become more and more blatant and partisan in recent years, and it may be that we are entering a phase in the development of the web in which people are realizing that if they want community without the noise and the intrusive agenda of the bazaar, they will have to pay for it.

The era of "people won't pay for content" may be coming to an end. That may be no bad thing.

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And there is something about Discord that turns me off. Like too many things everywhere. It feels very masculine and I hear other women also echo this sentiment.

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I’ve been involved with the Web since 1994 and it has been my experience that small sites work best to build community, and by small I mean sufficient, engaged participants to establish critical mass but not so many as to destroy intimacy.

They are hard to find.

Twitter was a ‘community’ until it chose to embrace algorithms. Communication was difficult by severe limitations of post length.

Mastodon has been a community, but we’ll see how much the Twitter-fleers change the intimacy and tone.

Substack is an awkward community given the way it is set up -- for an individual not groups.

As to FB & IG ... firehoses and little individual control.

So I look for small pockets, tiny corners.

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This is something I have been thinking about recently. In a pre-Twitter world (from what I can remember lol), I would maybe hear about a blog or website and add it to my Google Reader (RIP) feed. And then would rely on those blogs to learn about other blogs worth following. But it was a much slower and much random-er process. As I tried to read every entry from each blog I followed, I was hesitant to add new ones.

That all got supercharged with Twitter, where you could follow a lot more people and not feel like you had to read every tweet from someone (although I certainly tried). And from the people I followed, I learned about podcasts and Facebook groups and Discords that I could join.

Facebook groups and Discord servers are great for forming a community, but the downside is the network effects needed to make those communities worthwhile. I'm in a number of Discord servers where it is basically the same unifying principle and it would really be better if there was only one server. So I find myself not really participating. Twitter doesn't have that problem because everyone is on it and you can interact with everyone.

I do think that Substack encourages community-building around the particular publication and I'm more likely to comment and interact where the writers are fostering discussion and responding to comments, like you are Simon. I'm excited to test out the Chats feature on my own newsletter once it's rolled out to Android and web.

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As I have written recently I've left Twitter and I am still working out community. I have a limited presence on most other sites but I am trying out Mastodon and some Discords. And there's the Substack community itself. I still have hopes for a true global network but it seems like it could be an unsolvable problem.

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I quit Twitter a few months ago so I don’t know what is happening there. I never really liked it. I liked Facebook in 2008 when it was just my friends and I having funny conversations. But when the share button appeared and allowed people to use other people’s content, it started going downhill. And when it became a soapbox for political ranting I was done with it.

I agree with small is better for community. The larger a Discord gets, the harder it is to follow and the more it feels like social media. I find the best community in my Substack comments right now. I haven’t activated the chat feature yet. It is a little one-sided since only the newsletter owner (or contributors) can start a conversation. And I don’t really want another daily chore of thinking up a chat question.

I used to get a great creative writer community feeling on Medium, but that died a few years ago with the Partner Program change.

Outside of writing, I have built a community of both followers and fellow musicians with my acoustic trio on TikTok. There is a community of people who follow a specific group of musicians and attend their livestreams. Through that community (and livestream interaction), I have gotten to know the other musicians. We even coordinate our livestream schedules and promote each other. Since the start of the year my band has gone from 0 to 44k followers.

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Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022Liked by Simon K Jones

I've seen posts from writers and artists begging people not to leave Twitter because that's how they promote their work, network and make more business contacts. I feel for them, but it's also a valuable lesson on why we writers cannot depend on "rented land" to do our business. Which is why I've always prioritised setting up and building content on my website and maintaining a mailing list.

That said, I couldn't take my eyes off the Twitter drama. I don't like Musk in general. I think he's a narcissist, not a genius like everyone says he is because he's great at one thing: Buying innovations and touting it as his own. Granted, he is a good businessman. A ruthless one - and I suppose that's why people love him. He makes the hard decisions and don't care how it looks on him. But imagine having that kind of person running one of the world's most powerful media outlets? Frightening. In my country, where "cybertroopers" are deployed during election time to smear the opposition online, Twitter will be a playground.

I've been following how my favourite authors - most of them heavy Twitter users - are reacting. I think everyone's knows Stephen King's infamous conversation with Elon Musk. Some have decided to leave completely. It's sad, because I think Twitter needs dissenting voices. If it truly is becoming a "hellhole" we need some angels to balance things out.

I'm staying on Twitter, however. I have a very carefully cultivated feed. I only interact with good, fun people. I've met interesting people this way. And I generally enjoy the chatter on my feed. But sometimes my tweeps get frustrated and start ranting and that attracts trolls and ... yeah, it's unavoidable to pissed off at least once a day on Twitter! lol

I do engage with folks not of my world view - as long as they are nice and balanced and willing to hold civil discourse. Unfortunately ... that doesn't seem to happen much these days!

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Interestingly, I’ve discovered more writer people over on Twitter since Friday than I have in any 48 hour period since I signed up over 2 years ago. Then, yesterday, horse Twitter took off running in the wake of the Breeders Cup and the retirement of several prominent stallions to stud.

I’m on Twitter, still, but my curation is starting to look more like it did on Facebook during 2016–one strike and you’re blocked. I’ve expanded it to aggressive Mastodon-explaining techies who can’t seem to take “it doesn’t work for me” as a response. They possess an evangelical fervor akin to crypto bros or people who think Open/Libre Office is wonderful and everyone should use it. Generally, oddly enough, they’re also low-follower, recent accounts.

I’ve added Counter Social to my list. Once someone stops DDOSing it, it should be a great place. It used to be part of Mastodon but it’s its own thing now. Lots of eclectic interests and…I’ve met even more writers! It doesn’t seem to be a site for aggressive promotion but subtle seems to work as well.

Replacing Twitter professionally is going to be hard simply because of the degree of networking that happens there. I’ve landed several interviews and learned about publishing opportunities that don’t get duplicated elsewhere.

Discord—I may create my own whatever-you-call-it there, but for now, I’m part of several writing Discords—including SFWA, Substack, Kindle Vella Writers, a couple I learned about through Twitter—and several science fiction convention Discords focused on virtual convention running.

Other than that, I’m going to try to get more long-form posting such as Substack going. Now that I’ve had cataract surgery, a lot of this stuff seems to be easier to think about. But I have to ramp up because I realized I’ve seriously ramped down as a response to a fast-moving cataract.

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Another wonderful positive of Substack is that communities often form around podcasts, but in the past, podcast hosts had to use other platforms to host their community chats. Now Substack allows podcasters to keep everyone in one place on one app.

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it great as writers we have choice my trouble is sticking to one. I have not long started substack but I really like using it and I find more people open my emails I am slowly shifting my newsletter subscribers over I never did like twitter however

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As an NFT poet, I’m not ditching Twitter yet, but yes to Discord and Substack too :)

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I never left Ello. And they're finally getting around to rebuilding it, so that's nice. But those of us who stayed, have had a nice lowkey community of writers, artists, and musicians for about seven or eight years now. It's super chill.

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Nov 8, 2022·edited Nov 8, 2022Liked by Simon K Jones

I can't really think of anything online I would dub a "community," other than spaces delegated to specific topics - i.e. "The VFX Community," or "The Doctor Who Community," and those are directed discussion rooms. This applies to Reddit, Discord, or the FXhome/ActionVFX forums, either "Chan," et.al. Pretty much everything has self-sectioned into small topics and illustrates the nigh-unavoidable truism that when you lock enough "like minded" people into a shared space they will either ossify, close ranks and gatekeep, or tear themselves apart with petty internal struggle. I've withdrawn from all Reddit and Discord groups/servers I was in and only keep the accounts so no one else can create accounts with my email addresses (which did happen on two platforms and took awhile to sort out)

Whatsapp is basically encrypted SMS/MMS messaging. It requires your phone number, allows you to send texts, voice, photo and short video clips, and the only reason I'm on it is because no Irish phone providers handle MMS anymore - but it's literally the same functionality given by standard cell phone service in the USA. Except "encrypted." Which means diddly/(squat^2) given how many Whatsapp threads have been entered into evidence to things like the J6 committee.

Facebook and Twitter are relatively unique in that they really are soapboxes to allow one to spew whatever they wish into the digital ether for all and sundry to see. Facebook, of course, allows Groups and/or filtering your posts to only be seen by your mutual contacts - or subsets of your mutual contacts (aka "Friends" and "Close Friends"). Their potential community aspects have more or less been overriden by algorithmic filtering and abuse of such by bad actors. Still, I will maintain my accounts there - again, solely to prevent others from creating accounts using my emails.

Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Vimeo, et.al. are NOT "social media communities," they are shared gallery apps that may or may not allow comments. In most cases, except one, which will come up below), I maintain my accounts solely to keep my emails locked up. I'm sensing a theme, here.

Dunno. Closest I can think of to online communities are the old Yahoo Messenger rooms. Perhaps I'm biased, for there I'd met people who have been friends - actual friends - for decades.

The aforementioned FXhome forum had a community feel for quite a while, and may be the only other online place where I've met people I would consider "friends" - Hi, Simon! - but, sadly, that place changed for the worse about 14 months ago and has become negative, bordering on toxic.

I have few other insights and no true solutions or suggestions. I am slowly withdrawing from the online spaces I used to frequent (I'm even transferring my Hitfilm University YouTube channel over to Film Sensei Jay Haynes to allow him to continue maintaining the ever growing Playlists of tutorials - and Simon, you've known me long enough and well enough to understand that is highly significant withdrawal...as well as the exception to maintaining an account to lock up the associated email address. The email address in this case can be closed) , and am trying to consolidate those people who I actually care about away from being spread across multiple sites. This likely means returning to direct messaging via Whatsapp or similar client or returning to good old email.

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Loving the Substack community. I was never a big Twitter user, but find myself using it more and more lately because IG and FB have gotten so bad and full of bots and ads and people impersonating my account. A year ago I would have said IG was my biggest community, but I’m super annoyed with that platform also since reels.

I’m excited about Elon’s Twitter takeover because I think he’s a brilliant visionary genius and I LOVE my Tesla 3, so I’m curious how things will turn out.

IMO Teslas are at least 5x better than any regular car so to me there is no compelling reason to think Twitter won’t improve over time.

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