I really miss the experience I had with MySpace back in 2004-2007. It gave users a lot of control over their personal pages, and I had a lot of fun adding all sorts of wacky things. I got to communicate with some of my favorite bands and authors, all the content in someone's profile was contained in a single place. There was almost a diy feel to it. I sometimes even feel nostalgic about the "Top 8" drama. It was a simpler time. I was also young so I probably overlooked the darker side of things then. People did warn a lot about putting your real name online because it might give murderers your information, granted there were fewer people on the internet then and it had a certain wild west vibe to it, the great unknown with associated fears- somewhere along the way society did a 180 and everyone started putting all their information online. It's really strange to think about the shifts, but even stranger to think about the sources of the moving parts bringing the changes.

There are alternatives to corporate-run social media (the Fediverse, to name one off the top of my head) that are less-known. I've personally just left social media altogether. I had a period of time I spent in cycles of addiction/absrinence and I have to say I much prefer to keep in touch with people on more personal direct contact (snail mail, e-mail, messaging) without meddling, extra baggage, advertisers, my data being sold off to unknown entities to do as they please according to their most likely not benign motivations. But the biggest factor in my exit from social media was how negative it all became.

I joined facebook in 2007 when you needed to be invited in and it was basically mostly students. Ober the years things went from "so neat I can connect to people all over the world" to an online battleground in the span of a decade (arguably 2 decades, depending on your online experience). The convenience of keeping in touch with relatives/friends overseas and the wonderment of making friends online has become eclipsed by all the other things which have nothing to do with people being able to connect. If anything these big platforms have become all about (directly, indirectly, incidentally, regardless) gaming the divisions between people to push them apart and foment rifts they can profit from, at least that's how I see it and I am just done with all that.