There's not as much money in this space as you think there is.

Like the reason the features you expect don't exist is that a venture capitalist isn't paying for them and funding the salaries of hundreds of engineers, and thus real people (many with a full time paying job) are building those things. Because they want to build them, not because it's their job.

They can say "No, I don't want to work on that" and no one can fire them--because they aren't even getting paid.

Ease up on the entitlement.

If you want a free space that we control, help fund it, help build it, or adjust your expectations accordingly.

Once had a quick conversation with a Libertarian who apparently thought, "But who would build the roads?" is the funniest question.

They all laugh about it.

"Duh, before governments people built roads all the time."

Yeah, paved deer tracks and toll roads run by profiteers?

But my question is, what if there's a toll road that costs $5000 to cross it?

*smug Libertarian looks at one another* "Well, that's called competition someone else just builds another road and charges $3000 instead."

Oh, yes, hmm, indeed, truly you have an enlightened political philosophy ready to run the world. Let me see if I get this straight.

My option, when crossing through your mountain road through the only available mountain pass if I can't afford to pay--is to wait for someone to--what? Hollow out a fucking mountain?

And my reward waiting for all of this blasting and drilling and infrastructure is someone with a road that costs $3000 to pass?

And if I don't like that...what? Are we tunneling under the earth now, or are we just deciding we're not allowed on the other side of that fucking mountain?

Go back to school, put your crayons away, and get back to me with smug jokes when you've put more than five seconds of thought into your "political philosophy."

You just don't want to care about other people or acknowledge they exist, and you still want to keep profiting off of their desperation, and you've somehow invented something even worse than our current disaster; so you can go eat your ass ear-first.

There are some people on the fedi that it's like...every day is a battle in their mentions.

And there's a part--a very small part--of me that wants to say, "What are you doing to invite that?"

And another small part of me (of which I am not proud) adds, "It's not like I've ever experienced that. Certainly not to that degree."

And then it dawns on me: This is whiteness talking. Of course I haven't experienced it. The people in question are a black man and a trans woman.

I talk all this shit, and only rarely get someone in my mentions wanting to fight about it.

Now that's some privilege.

The path of least resistance states that some big company owning social media isn't a problem, until it is.

If things seem competently run, you'll give them a shot, start posting, entering a bunch of personal data, tell your friends.

I think it will be harder to convince people to do that going forward. We've had a sort of 'social media reset' the past 6 months or so, and if anything, it seems to be accelerating (as all the big platforms start doubling down on really bad ideas.)

Ultimately the web is transient, and stuff can change over time, and a site that was once trusted can lose that trust.

Better, I think, to exist on a platform where no one owns you, your data is exportable (and importable, some places) and your follow graph can move with you.

You get to watch flameouts and personalities and bad admins in realtime here, too, lots more of them than just one.

But you're ultimately not beholden to any of that. You can move until you find your people, and your followers come with you.

That's just not a thing anywhere else.