First, let me get this out of the way: I am not trying to change your mind. I absolutely am not trying to do that.
But I am going to address a couple of your points for anyone who comes by later.
First: creators promoting their own stuff is socially absolutely fine, as long as your presence is not just a stream of ads.
(Which is kind of true everywhere. Nobody likes people who just spew ads.)
I mean, I know a bunch of people who do it there. Hell, I do it there. This post went there and got a lot of positive responses - probably not surprisingly - but so does all my other writing. I have an audience in the thousands there - at the lowest end, around 2,000; routinely in the 4-5,000 range, my record is in the 40,000 range - and I get far more interaction there than anywhere else.
A bunch of larger writers like John Scalzi and Charlie Stross have big audiences there, far larger than mine.
There's a small but active artist community there too.
So just to be clear for anyone who comes around later: as long as you're not just spitting out ads (and not abusing hashtags and so on - stuff everyone agrees is bullshit), then you are welcome as a creator.
What you're not going to do, though, is become an "internet influencer" there. That won't happen. But writers, artists, crafts, stuff like that? It's fine.
Secondly... the funny thing about the social media I own myself is... I do own it myself. I own my own Mastodon instance and my self-hosted Federated Wordpress instance, the latter has several hundred followers separately to my main presence, and which has been growing like crazy lately.
Self-hosting is definitely not for everybody, and I absolutely do not recommend it for people who are not technical! But the Federation is the one place you can actually do all that.
I mean, again, it's not for everyone and I definitely do not recommend it if you aren't technically inclined.
But if you are, it is the one place where you actually can own it yourself.
no subject
But I am going to address a couple of your points for anyone who comes by later.
First: creators promoting their own stuff is socially absolutely fine, as long as your presence is not just a stream of ads.
(Which is kind of true everywhere. Nobody likes people who just spew ads.)
I mean, I know a bunch of people who do it there. Hell, I do it there. This post went there and got a lot of positive responses - probably not surprisingly - but so does all my other writing. I have an audience in the thousands there - at the lowest end, around 2,000; routinely in the 4-5,000 range, my record is in the 40,000 range - and I get far more interaction there than anywhere else.
A bunch of larger writers like John Scalzi and Charlie Stross have big audiences there, far larger than mine.
There's a small but active artist community there too.
So just to be clear for anyone who comes around later: as long as you're not just spitting out ads (and not abusing hashtags and so on - stuff everyone agrees is bullshit), then you are welcome as a creator.
What you're not going to do, though, is become an "internet influencer" there. That won't happen. But writers, artists, crafts, stuff like that? It's fine.
Secondly... the funny thing about the social media I own myself is... I do own it myself. I own my own Mastodon instance and my self-hosted Federated Wordpress instance, the latter has several hundred followers separately to my main presence, and which has been growing like crazy lately.
Self-hosting is definitely not for everybody, and I absolutely do not recommend it for people who are not technical! But the Federation is the one place you can actually do all that.
I mean, again, it's not for everyone and I definitely do not recommend it if you aren't technically inclined.
But if you are, it is the one place where you actually can own it yourself.