Back in the day, setting up my own site was the best thing I did. And the skills I learned by doing so have evolved into a 25 year professional career.

You're right about Social networks etc. They ate bloggers' lunch.

Far too many people aren't prepared to teach themselves how things work these days and do things for themselves.

One of the greatest regrets I have as a webdev/designer was to give in to constant requests to make things 'fool-proof' in the name of growth.

Users never 'learned' anything. Like how to follow instructions or use a new UI/UX. Everything got dumbed-down.

Now look where we are on those networks. It's mostly an absolute mess of utter drivel. 'posted' (not created) by those 'fools'.