I wonder if theres going to be a split. Major platforms with all the slop, bots and ads, and then a more self hosted or volunteer ran services.

Personally I left the major platforms behind, says a lot if I say that Lemmy is the “biggest” platform I use these days (I don’t count watching YouTube without a account and never seeing the comments as using the platform in the “social” sense). Other than that, I’m on a small IRC network (we have about 150 people in total, 20-50 every day active ones and rest more or less active), same network hosts a old-timey forum, radio, git and something else that I’ve forgotten about, some of the people have Gemini capsules and stuff like that.

I much prefer the smaller place, theres less “noise” and I’m not demanded to do anything, nobody wants me to like and subscribe or watch/listen ads, nobody yells at me because I don’t subscribe to their politics 100%, nobody yells at me for asking a silly question about Linux, no. The radio has ads, but they are all jokes. Its less traffic, but I think the traffic is better quality. Like there might be days on the forum and theres no posts, there might be a few hours per day when nobody talks in the IRC, but that doesn’t bother me. Sometimes its good to not have a constant stream of stuff flying in your face.