For years, the internet has been shrinking. Not in size, not in data, but in ownership. A vast, decentralized network of personal blogs, forums, and independent communities has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by a few massive corporations. Every post, every “friend,” every creative work—
It’s not just ad-free, it’s actively anti-corporate, anti-advertising, even anti-monetization. I would go so far as to say even anti-content in some ways. That’s a cultural disconnect that goes beyond tooling.
There are upvoted positive posts and comments about
the Switch 2 announcement (but not Nintendo’s legal policy),
the Framework advertising event last week,
Valve/Steam/SteamOS/Steamdeck/Gabe Newell in general,
Costco in general,
EVs in general (excluding Tesla and Cybertrucks 😂),
podcasts that solicit funding and carry advertising,
anime and anime adjacent products,
Lenovo’s laptops,
individuals selling stuff on Redbubble/Etsy/OnlyFans,
subscription razor blade delivery (not from Amazon),
and “voting with your wallet”.
It’d be cool if the platform made it easier for orgs to build and interact with a following here. Niches of users really like talking about them. That doesn’t mean ads, it means features that would benefit regular users as well.
That’s people just sharing their opinion freely. Word of mouth chatter is definitely not the same as advertising or even influencing, though of course they try to be.