Where else can I go?
I’ve always found the wider social media landscape a bit intimidating. I was too young for MSN, never warmed up to facebook, snapchat, insta or whatever came after. I liked youtube, reddit, and discord, where I could enguage in hobby communities without wondering if my family would stumble across a comment I’d written. I never considered myself a heavy social media user.
And yet as we come to the halfway point of 2026, the UK faces wide sweeping changes to the social media world. A flat ban for under 16 year olds and, consequently, a requirement to prove that you’re over 16. Given I am not prepared to dish out my government ID to any backwater data broker on the net, I will be using a VPN for as long as that remains an option, and dipping out entirely otherwise. It made me think about how such an important commodity has come to rest in the hands of some of the greediest, most irresponsible people in our society. Big Tech holds the keys to so much of our lives, and our governments have done a historically shit job of protecting us from the greed and irresponsibility of these corporate giants.
So, I refer you to the video that showed me an alternative. As I write this, I’m struck by the barebones nature of the blog so far compared to the examples in the video, but hopefully that will begin to change!
The Indie Web
I just missed out on this era of internet. It would never have occurred to me that the web could be traversed, site to site, link by link. But what a magical way to do it! If we want to shake off the taint of Google, of big tech as a whole, this seems like a lovely place to start. And hey maybe I’ll learn something about web dev along the way. God knows that native Android development as a carrer seems dead in the water.
It’s not perfect, I’ll be using GitHub to host, and will still be using sites like reddit, discord and youtube on a daily basis. But, it is a step in what feels like the right direction.
Keeping myself accountable
This is straight forward. I have too many hobbies. True many of them intertwine and support each other, but that doesn’t make it any easier to stick to one project, finishing it and moving on. Crazy, impossible, it can’t be done sir. But, if I can use this blog to keep track of what I’m doing maybe it’ll be easier to keep some sort of mommentum, or at least not forget one of my several WIPs.
Supporting the artists I enjoy
If nothing else, I hope someone else might stumble across this and appricate the links to other artists sites. These people amaze me.