Social media platforms

Social media platforms are websites or apps where people who do not possess much of a social life in the real world can blather on to each other about meaningless twaddle that only they care about. Obviously these people are nothing like us. Popular types of social media include social networks, social news sites, and video-sharing sites.
On the positive side, social media platforms can help people stay in touch with friends and family because people move around a lot.
On the how-it-works side, social media companies need to keep people engaged because they make money primarily from selling advertising: the more people who stay on the platform longer, the more advertising revenue. This is not different than how mainstream media works. What is different is that social media — at least initially — lacked regulation and lacked content moderation. As it turned out, without constraints on engagement-centric algorithms on social media, platforms have a tendency to drive people towards more political extremism and more conspiracy theories.How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter (2022) ISBN 0593137787. As former design ethicist at Google, Tristan Harris, put it:
Extremist political operatives have exploited this feature to rise from relative obscurity to running entire countries (e.g., Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil), and to facilite genocide in Burma.
Sexualized harassment is widespread on corporate media (including but not necessarily limited to Meta/Facebook/Twitter/X/Instagram) and it has been documented that major sites have decided to ignore this problem ("nonrecognition") despite being confronted with the evidence that they have the capacity to properly deal with it.The Continued (In)visibility of Cyber Gender Abuse by Danielle Keats Citron (22 Nov 2023) The Yale Law Journal 133:333-371.
==Major sites==
===Facebook===
Facebook is a social networking site that was originally founded in 2004 for college students but opened to the general public in 2006. Today, Facebook is known as one of the largest spreaders of fake news and conspiracy theories on the Web.
===Twitter===
Twitter is another prominent social media website, known for its short character limits and constant internet drama. Many in the far right have used it to spread their views. In 2022, Elon Musk bought it out, resulting in an unmitigated disaster of management, including Musk personally letting long-banned wingnuts back in, an increasing number of advertisers running for the hills due to their ads being juxtaposed with Nazi rhetoric, basic functions being increasingly locked behind a paywall, and an inexplicable rebrand to "X" that, at best, only Musk's fellow wingnuts have embraced.
===Instagram===
Instagram (IG), acquired by in 2012, is a social networking site centered around pictures and videos. It is famous for its requirement that all content must be uploaded from a mobile phone, encouraging photos to be taken "in the moment." It is also known for its previous requirement that all photos be square; however, photos may now be uploaded in any aspect ratio. Instagram also offers filters to make the images appear more beautiful. Content ranges from posed self portraits ("selfies") to nature photography, and some accounts upload Internet memes. It is not uncommon for people to have hundreds or thousands of "followers", and some users make multiple accounts.
People can "like" photos on Instagram with a double tap, and they can leave comments. Users on Instagram often upload for ego boosts and self-importance. People tend to channel only their "best" moments, including very dramatic ones. Its reputation as a place of positivity and good vibes (in comparison to Facebook or Twitter) means it has become a place where everybody appears to be perfect and people obsessively post and tinker with photos attempting to get likes, endlessly comparing themselves not only with their friends' best moments but with superstar influencers photoshopped to look like mannequins.Instagram Worsens Body Image Issues And Erodes Mental Health, NPR, September 26, 2021 Research has associated it with a string of psychological problems from preventing sleep to body image issues and "fear of missing out" (FOMO), leading to it being termed the worst social media site for mental health.Instagram is supposed to be friendly. So why is it making people so miserable?, The Guardian, September 17, 2018Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health, Time, May 25, 2017 This was only made worse by revelations in the Wall Street Journal in 2021 that its owner, Facebook, knew about the damage it was causing to teens' mental health but kept it secret.Facebook knows Instagram harms teens. Now, its plan to open the app to kids looks worse than ever, Tech Crunch, September 16, 2021
Despite its reputation for positivity, it has also become notorious for trolls and racist abuse.It has been too easy to send footballers vile abuse via Instagram DMs for too long, The Athletic, May 3, 2021 In short, you're kidding yourself if you think that being addicted to Instagram is any better than being addicted to Facebook or Twitter.
Facebook's own leaked research showed the potential for negative mental health effects for children using Instagram, though Facebook has publicly tried to downplay the research.Facebook tries to minimize its own research ahead of hearings on children’s safety: The company is going on the defensive as Congress is scheduled to grill a Facebook executive about the company’s record on children’s and teens’ mental health. by Cat Zakrzewski & Rachel Lerman (September 29, 2021) The Washington Post.
===Tumblr===
Tumblr is a "microblogging" platform that fits somewhere between Twitter and traditional blogs, with a particular focus on posting photos and short messages, and a "reblog" function that creates nested comments. At its moment of popularity in the 2010s, over half of Tumblr's users were under 25 and 55% are female, leading some to joke that Tumblr was the "obnoxious young woman" website to go with 4chan and Reddit's "obnoxious young men."
Tumblr attracts various subcultures, including a great many television and movie fandoms, Japanophiles, artists, writers, foodies, hipsters, otherkin, and social justice warriors activists. The latter range the full spectrum from progressive liberals to outright Marxists and anarchists, but are often stereotyped as thin-skinned, judgmental, politically correct to a fault, vindictive, and prone to knee-jerk ("triggered") reactions, with a jargon of postmodern neologisms. Even people who are generally on board with the 2010s progressive/feminist/social justice memepool tend to find some of these folks to be, depending on your perspective, unreasonable, and agreeing with some of them can range from being a bit of a strain to downright impossible. For this reason, Tumblr frequently comes up as a boogeyman among MRAs and like-minded people, who tend to cherry-pick the most egregious or hypocritical posts and pretend that the Tumblr community has a monolithic userbase. From time to time, these posts end up coming from troll blogs run by the same people mocking Tumblr in the first place.
The aforementioned reblogging system, which makes it difficult to track down post edits and replies to particularly popular posts (and thus corrections, responses, and factual rebuttals), has also led to cases of misinformation spreading like wildfire,The Sea of Hoax Tumblr blogThe Walking Dead scene mistaken for an actual picture of someone dying during an MRI, originally from ruoloc. Note: correction on actual post not visible in reblog."The Statue of Liberty was originally black" myth, naturalbods. See also: SnopesMovie shot mistaken as a real photo of US war crimes in Vietnam, originally from angerr which doesn't help the stereotype at all.
In December 2018 its owners announced a ban on adult content (previously it was home to a wide range of porn from the misogynistic to the queer and trans); as a result 30% of users left by March 2019.After the porn ban, Tumblr users have ditched the platform as promised, The Verge, Mar 14, 2019 It had been bought by Yahoo! in 2013 for $1.1 billion dollars, with Verizon merging its internet stuff into Yahoo! in 2017 to form a new company called Oath, later renamed Verizon Media Group. In 2019, Verizon decided to sell Tumblr, with PornHub suggested as a potential buyer, but even reinserting the dick pics probably couldn't save it.Even a Pornhub Acquisition May Not Save Tumblr From Brink of Collapse, Observer, 3 May 2019 In the end, Automattic (the company behind popular blogging platform Wordpress), bought Tumblr for an undisclosed price, but reported by several sources as $3 million dollars (a little under .3% of the original purchase price).Verizon Sells Tumblr for a Bag of Nickels, Motley Fool, 16 Aug 2019 
That said, one blog makes it all worth it.
===DreamWidth===
The LiveJournal engine is open source, so anyone can create a fork. It turns out it's rather expensive in terms of server resources and bandwidth, the code has rotted badly, and most sites making the attempt have failed or become notorious for unreliability. DreamWidth was founded by ex-employees of LiveJournal with a mandate to be less stupid and evil than the various owners of LiveJournal and to take care to expand in a sustainable form. So far it's holding out quite well.
They've lured a lot of fanfic authors, as well as members of minorities thanks to their friendly diversity policies. Their extensive work to make the software suck lessTechnical debt and the making of payments on it (denise, dreamwidth.org, 2011-03-29)Adding examples to the essay on technical debt (foxfirefey, dreamwidth.org, 2012-01-01) has been adopted by most of the LJ forks.
===Reddit===
:See: Reddit
:You can find the RationalWiki subreddit here
In 2012 Reddit was known for having the largest jailbait forum on the internet (not to mention user ViolentAcrez's legendary outing and interview with CNN),Chen, Adrian, "Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web", Gawker (12 October 2012, 4:00P).Violentacrez on CNN, YouTube 18 October 2012. and in 2014 it was known for celebrity nude leaks and Gamergate.Roy, Jessica, "Reddit Made a Ton of Money Off of Those Nude Celebrity Photos". NY Mag (10 September 2014, 1:42 pm)."Wikileaks wades into #GamerGate, says Nato as corrupt as video games journalism", New Statesman 16 September 2014. Now it's a mixed bag of stupid, angry fascists and rational, decent people — though the former are increasingly being kicked off the site and migrating to alternative sites.Reddit bans r/The_Donald and r/ChapoTrapHouse as part of a major expansion of its rules, The Verge, 29 June 2020.
Praise WOSH!Our Lord and Savior WOSH on Reddit.
===LiveJournal===
Remember those halcyon days when teenagers didn't want everyone reading their diary?
The English-speaking LiveJournal community is far too full of furries, neopagans, the sort of science fiction fans and role-playing gamers who confuse the difference between in-universe and real life, dragon and vampire wannabes, and other kiddie fantasy-land subculturists. Again, nothing like us. Their mascot is a goat, though, so they got that going for them.
LiveJournal pages are also mirrored and archived by at least two different (probably unauthorized) websites, making it a privacy risk to post anything there (same as with all other social networking sites), regardless of whether you set your LiveJournal account to block search engines from your page - everything will wind up on Google forever anyhow because of these mirror sites.
Though founded in the United States, LiveJournal proved surprisingly popular in Russia, to the point that it has become the standard Russian blog host, with high-profile Russian politicians and authors hosting their personal blogs on the site. The site was bought by a Russian company and Russian users now make up the majority of its base. The English- and Russian-speaking sides of LiveJournal are, for all intents and purposes, separate communities and rarely interact. 
It was fine until December 2016, when their servers were relocated to Russia. Five months later, they changed the user agreement to protect the children from teh evil gay menace conform to Russian law, and now, anyone who gets over 3,000 visits to their page in a 24-hour period must reveal their identity, so the Russian law enforcement can imprison re-educate any popular dissenters extremists.
===FetLife===
Laughed off as the "Kinkster's Facebook" what many people don't realise is that FetLife is a fully functioning social network site, with many of the functions of Facebook (but not the annoying Farmville spam), with almost 3,000,000 members. In addition, while people wait to see what Diaspora's open-source project is like, FetLife is written entirely in open-source software,FetLife's open source Projects which they make freely available on their site. They have also delivered presentations on their software at various conferences.On-line versions of their presentations
The site is free to use, relying on advertising revenue and unsolicited subscriptions from its members (supporters receive additional, but non-essential functionality) and actively discourages — indeed has not enabled — meat-market-style searches by age, gender or kink. Unfortunately, their privacy rules make it difficult for people who have been victimized by others within the community to warn people or call out their attackers.http://disruptingdinnerparties.com/2013/05/08/got-consent-3-fetlife/
Although it membership has swelled over the past few years, much of this can be attributed to curious "tourists," who have read 'Fifty Shades' and want to see what this is all about. This, of course, pisses off the old guard, who are leaving the site.Fifty Shades of Grey poses a threat to online BDSM communities This BDSM community is furious about 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
===Quora===
Quora is both a question-and-answer site similar to a more informal version of Stack Exchange and a social media platform. The social media platform is very popular in the United States and India, to such a point where jokes about India being how you became well-known are found across social media or on blog-style posters.https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-clever-life-hack-youve-learned/answer/Max-Searle
===Discord===
:You can find RationalWiki Discord server here
Discord is a relatively recent social media platform that has quickly risen in popularity with over 200 million users. Touted as "by gamers, for gamers", it is an online chat client not unlike the IRC chats of old. Users can join various servers that host a wide variety of subjects, from videogames, to tv shows, or even just certain popular subjects. Of course, the intuitiveness of the client means that a lot of servers with... nasty subjects end up popping all over the place, with entire servers dedicated to CP, grooming, and many others. The platform was utilized heavily by the alt-right and neo-Nazi groups with Unicorn Riot and other outlets such as Montreal Gazette leaking chat logs. To Discord's credit though, the platform has taken steps to clean house and stamp out extremism and other illegal content, albeit to mixed results.
===Fediverse & Mastodon===
The network that the failed social network Diaspora is considered a part of, the Fediverse is a unique social media platform that is completely decentralized. Whilst it existed since 2008 thanks to GNU/Social, it mainly took off in popularity when the W3C defined the ActivityPub protocol and the Mastodon project (which is one of the projects that provides instance software for servers and aims to mimic Twitter) received media coverage. Unlike other social media, where users are essentially locked in to only talk with users that sign up on the same site as them, users on the Fediverse can instead talk to users on any site that implements the relevant protocols (called an instance) and it's possible to self-host an instance for as low as the cost of a domain name and a Raspberry Pi.https://feneas.org/pleroma-hosting-on-raspberry-pi/ While the Fediverse is typically praised for allowing instance users a greater degree of protection against harassment (instance owners can opt to block instances from communicating with them entirely and compared to Twitter there is a more fine-grained control of who can see statuses), this has not stopped the alt-right from attempting to utilize it (notable examples of this include Gab and Kiwi Farms) to harass other users as well as providing a substantial amount of alt-tech sites. The size of the Fediverse, according to a dedicated tracking site (although due to its decentralized nature, the actual number is likely to be larger) is 12.4 million users as of October 2023.
Mastodon in particular saw a massive boost in new users from the middle, and especially towards the end, of 2022 due to a certain other website being taken over by some dickhead, with a lot of the network quickly becoming overwhelmed and a vast array of new resources needing to be thrown at keeping it propped up. Things are still shaking out, but in general there's been a lot of new lifeblood added to the network, which has provoked a predictably mixed reaction from the pre-influx userbase, not helped by some of the overbearing/scolding behaviour of some newbies who mistakenly mistook "nice" for "no swearing, nudity or fun".
=== TikTok ===
The latest member of the social media scene is TikTok which offers a series of short (up to ten minutes) video clips, primarily people karaoking songs or doing creative clips. The service is noted for two things, one is the clips themselves and secondly, it is one of the few Chinese-owned social media services that is popular in the West. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, based in Beijing and was originally known and is still known by its Chinese name 抖音 (Dǒuyīn), however this is technically a separate service from the international TikTok. As the company is based in the People's Republic, it has been accused of capitulating to the government and performing various forms of censorship over its service. Due to its Chinese connections, many government agencies and private companies from English-speaking countries including the U.S. Army, the British Home Office, the BBC and Australian Defence Forces have banned the installation of TikTok on their devices. TikTok not approved for use on Australia's Defence devices ABC News In another example of the horseshoe theory, the Taliban also banned TikTok for "misleading youth".Afghanistan: Taliban orders TikTok, PUBG ban for 'misleading' youths BBC News, 2022 April 22
On June 29, 2020, after a border clash over a disputed section of the China-India border, India banned TikTok. Ostensibly the ban was over national security concerns,"India Bans Nearly 60 Chinese Apps, Including TikTok and WeChat" by Maria Abi-Habib, New York Times, 2020 June 29 but some analysts saw the ban as a weak tit-for-tat reaction to the increased border tensions."India has few good ways to punish China for its Himalayan land-grab", Economist, 2020 July 2
On August 6, 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order effectively banning Tiktok from the United States if the firm was not sold in 45 days."Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok", Whitehouse.gov, 2020 August 6 Ostensibly the ban was about the potential for Chinese spying, censorship, and propaganda. Commentators wondered, however, if part of the reason for the ban had to do with Tiktok trolling a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20, 2020"Is This The Real Reason Why Trump Wants To Ban TikTok?" by Abram Brown, Forbes, 2020 Aug 1, which was a couple weeks before Trump first began musing about banning the app."Pompeo says the U.S. is ‘certainly looking at’ banning TikTok and other Chinese apps" by Timothy Bella, Washington Post, 2020 July 7 However, after a variety of court cases delaying the ban, Joe Biden came to power and in June 2021 revoked Trump's order.Biden reverses Trump's effort to ban TikTok, orders broader review of foreign-owned apps, NBC News, June 9, 2021 However, Biden did sign a different law that would ban the app if ByteDance does not sell it by 2025.Biden signs a bill that could ban TikTok — after the 2024 election, NBC News, April 24, 2024 Some critics have noted the many of the calls for TikTok's ban came from politicians who are concerned that TikTok's user base are being too supportive of Palestine and critical of Israel.Is the TikTok ban about China — or is it really about Gaza? Mira Fox. The Forward. January 15, 2025 Meanwhile, during the 2024 United States presidential election, Trump did a 180 and reversed his earlier calls to ban the app,The U.S.’s TikTok ban is full of contradictions Fortune. May 3, 2024 due to the fact that he has gathered a significant following on the platform, as well as a means of sticking it to the Democrats and Meta. Upon on becoming President in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order pausing the ban and proposing for a partial sale of ByteDance's US operations.Trump discussing TikTok purchase with multiple people, decision in 30 days Reuters. January 27, 2025
For now, TikTok has been like any other social media platform: widely attacked around the world for its cavalier attitude to users' data and failure to protect children.Social media giant TikTok sued by former children's commissioner over 'shady' data collection policy, Sky News, April 21, 2021TikTok investigated over alleged transfer of personal data to China and child safety, Sky News, September 14, 2021
==Non-English language==
===VKontakte===
A Russian equivalent of Facebook, VKontakte (or VK) is notable for having cute cartoons to guide you through the sign-up process, and for happily hosting horrifyingly homophobic groups, allowing them a safe and largely unregulated forum to post videos of their exploits. On a side note, VK began enjoying a surge of popularity in the United States starting around 2013, largely boosted by the attempts of American males to find a Slavic female companion.archive.is Ukrainin' Men: How American Men Are Using the Russian Facebook to Find Brides] by Adrien Chen (2012 May 15) Gawker. The network's founder and former CEO, Pavel Durov, is pretty onside with Internet freedoms, but in April 2014, he was fired from the company. He claims he was ousted by pro-Putin executives angered by his refusal to hand over user data to the Russian government.Once Celebrated in Russia, the Programmer Pavel Durov Chooses Exile by Danny Hakim (December 2, 2014) The New York Times. Surprisingly, a large number of Israelis use the site. This may be due to the vast Russian diaspora located there. Starting in 2016, VK began seeing an influx of American neo-Nazis, likely due to the lack of censorship.American Neo-Nazis Are on Russia's Facebook: To escape Facebook’s crackdown and connect with white-power groups worldwide, U.S.-based extremists are joining VK by Olga Khazan (May 20, 2016) The Atlantic.
===RenRen===
A Chinese social media site, similar to Facebook, filling the gap in the market caused by the PRC's blocking of Facebook and Twitter in mainland China. Currently as dead as Bebo and MySpace.
===Weibo===
Another Chinese social media giant, roughly equivalent to Twitter. Once tried to ban LGBT content then changed its mind when a ton of people got pissed off.https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/16/602902197/weibo-bans-gay-content-and-quickly-reverses-itself-after-an-outcry
===BiliBili===
Another Chinese social media site, which is very similar to YouTube. Know for a quiz during the signup process. BiliBili has 31.6 million registered users according to statistics published in December 2017.
===WeChat===
Yet another huge Chinese social media site, this one being similar to WhatsApp. It is owned by the controversial company In 2020, this website was known for censoring the COVID-19 pandemic. How WeChat Censored the Coronavirus Pandemic, Wired 27 Aug. 2020 It has also long served as a radicalization vector for immigrants from mainland China, spreading propaganda about how affirmative action will ban all Asians from universities, how Black Lives Matter kill Asians on the orders of the U.S. government, how Muslims are all jihadi terrorists, and other Q-Anon-tier conspiracy theories.China's Most Popular App Is Full Of Hate, Foreign Policy 27 Nov. 2018
===Cyworld===
Used to be South Korea's most popular home-grown social media network until around year 2010. By year 2015, they became so unpopular that they couldn't even able to maintain services considered as their basic function.
===Orkut===
Google's first attempt at a social network, Orkut was popular in Brazil and India. However, this wasn't enough, and Google pulled the plug in September 2014.
===Ameba===
Japan's answer to Twitter. Lets you build an avatar with their Pigg virtual community where you can talk with other people, and play games.
== Inactive sites ==
===Google+===
Google+ was Google's third attempt at a social network, was going to revolutionise the way we communicate and interact online, just like Google Wave and Google Buzz did. Google+'s main selling point was that it wasn't Facebook, but its main failing was that it wasn't Facebook. That is, approximately no bugger was on it, despite the artificially-inflated numbers Google claimed for it (e.g., by trying to force everyone on YouTube to have a G+ login). It could be fun if you happened to have enough people you know there.
Like Facebook, it allowed users to organise their friends and contacts into groups so that information could only be shared with certain people; e.g., what you showed your friends would be different to what you let your parents or your work colleagues saw. Unlike Facebook, however, it effectively idiot-proofed this process by forcing users to use the "circles" feature, where friends were grouped (Facebook's "friend list" feature is exactly the same, but optional, so basically the Great Unwashed out there in internet-land don't know it exists). Some people, mostly YouTubers, complained about Google+'s poor layout and botched integration into all kinds of other Google websites,A song about it"So the other day, my other channel was brutally forced into subduing to the wrath that is Google+. They may as well have just brutally fucking murdered the channel, ripped out its arteries and shot it in the back of the fucking head!"Lol fuk u spodermen ur usin googel+" which may have actually ended up having an impact on Google's later decision to end the forced integration strategy, since it didn't manage to save Google+ after all.http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/google-is-walking-dead/
Google+ claimed to no longer enforce the Real Names policy and its jaw-droppingly racist effects. (Google is not racist. It just doesn't think actual proper people could have names like PingMy Google+ profile has just been suspended for having an unusual name. (Ping, 23 July 2011). This is where they suspended their own employee because they didn't think his name was white enough. or Elaine Yellow Horsehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/joeflood/what-happens-when-google-doesnt-think-youre-a-human and that people whose names don't fit "firstname lastname"https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1228271?hl=en or are written in mixed scriptshttps://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!category-topic/gmail/contacts-and-sync/NRg0H6PxOW8 should have their accounts suspended.) So that's nice.
In October 2018, Google announced that it would be shutting down the service due to a bug being discovered that left private profile data exposed,Google+ is shutting down, and the site's few loyal users are mourning, CNBC and clearly it didn't have enough users to bother fixing. It was finally shut down on 2 April 2019. G+ is still available to businesses buying Google Apps.
===Friends Reunited===
This British site was one of the first social networks, launched in 2000. Initially it focused on allowing people to connect with former schoolmates (and post libellous comments about former teachers) but gradually it added more social network features, while becoming famous/notorious for people (often married people) hooking up with their childhood sweethearts.Teacher wins damages in Friends Reunited libel case, The Guardian, 21 May 2002'I met my wife on Friends Reunited', BBC, 18 Jan 2016 Unlike most social networks, it charged people to contact other users until 2008. It was bought by British commercial TV network ITV in 2005 for £120 million ($208 million), and in 2009 sold to DC Thomson (Scottish publisher of newspapers for elderly people like The Sunday Post and legendary kids comics like The Beano) for £25 million, before shutting in 2016.
===Myspace===
MySpace (now streamlined to just Myspace, with only one capitalization) was one of the first major social networking websites to hit critical mass and go mainstream. Launched in August 2003, at its peak, it was the most popular, with over 250 million members and described practically as some sort of nation state in its own right.August 2003: MySpace, CBS News In 2009, however, it was overtaken by Facebook in terms of membership and page views and popularity has steadily declined since, with its ranking on Alexa dropping from its peak in the top 5 to nearly 35 over the course of eighteen months; as of 2017, it has fallen outside the top 3,000.Alexa - MySpace.com site info Many think this decline is from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp buying it in 2005. While Facebook was rising dramatically, instead of changing MySpace to be with the times, they squeezed every last penny out of it, making the service like one of those pages full of ads you see when you're one letter off from a popular website. MySpace once required new users to fill in tons of personal info in order to join, info that would then be publicly shared with a million people they didn't know; of course, it was easy to fill in false information, as indeed many did (tons of profiles had their age listed at 69 years old and their income as over a million dollars). Nowadays, all they ask for is your gender, date of birth, and ZIP code. Also, your inbox will be filled with spam and "friend requests" promising you free porn if you add I_LIKE_KID_SEX_4 as your friend.
MySpace was famous for its association with the scene subculture, with a stereotypical profile often featuring scene pop-rock that played as soon as you entered. This auto-play feature could also act as an open invitation for viruses and other malware to just walk straight into your computer. Furthermore, as users had the freedom to heavily customize the layout of their page, most profiles appeared to have lime green text on purple scrolling backgrounds, or something similarly gaudy. Prolonged exposure to this dangerous combination of psychedelic text, whiny music, and potentially fatal HTML errors (even the homepage had enough errors in it to make the W3C lose sleep at night) led to mass defection to rival social network Facebook once it emerged as a viable alternative.
The Washington Post Magazine of March 16, 2008 listed MySpace as obsolescent, alongside such things as cassette tape mixes, rotary dial phones, answering machines, making cigarette ashtrays in kindergarten craft projects, and computer paper with holes in the side. Funny thing, print newspapers were somehow not on their list. Clearly then, MySpace is a thing of the past; after all, the Post is America's Newspaper of Record and would never jump the gun on a thing like this.
Viant, formerly known as Interactive Media Holdings and Specific Media, bought it from News Corp for $35m in 2011.Time Inc. Buys Myspace Parent Company Viant, Variety, 11 Feb 2016
In 2013, MySpace relaunched with a shiny new image and working system. Predictably, despite the several years' work and untold truckloads of dollars poured into the relaunch, it was still shite. Just in a different way. And they pissed off their remaining userbase by deleting most of the old versions' user-generated content, namely user blogs and messages.In a Rush to Modernize, MySpace Destroyed More History. – Ian Milligan, Archive History, June 17, 2013. This may be for the better in the long run, though, as it's likely that many former users are secretly glad that all record of their obnoxious teen years has been wiped off the internet.
Its parent company Viant was purchased by Time Inc in 2016, mostly to get control of its user data for advertising purposes, rather than to continue Myspace as a going concern.Time Inc becomes the latest company to buy Myspace by mistake, The Inquirer, 12 Feb 2016 Myspace continued as an internet Mary Celeste, but in late 2017, users started reporting music tracks being unplayable.MySpace music profiles (December 9, 2017) Months later, the site's developers acknowledged the problem and reported trying solve it. In 2019 it was reported that its owners had "accidentally" deleted all content uploaded before 2016. On their support pages, ironically, they recommended users to back up their files, something they themselves failed to do.Myspace apparently lost 12 years’ worth of music - "We are aware of the issue and I have been informed the issue will be fixed, however, there is no exact time frame for when this will be completed. Until this is resolved the option to download is not available."; "We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your backup copies."
Some conspiracy theorists speculated that MySpace was trying to save on server space by deliberately purging it, but few people cared.Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016, The Guardian, 18 March 2019Andy Baio on Twitter (March 18, 2019): "I'm deeply skeptical this was an accident. Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than “we can't be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s.”"
===Friendster===
Friendster was the original social networking site, or at least the first one to become really popular. Its peak years were from its founding in 2002 to around mid-2004, when MySpace supplanted it in the US and made it the original joke about a fallen social network.The Onion. "Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization." Since then, nearly all of its popularity had been in East and Southeast Asia, where it evolved into a "social gaming" site (i.e. hive of "free-to-play" games that sucker you with microtransactions). Friendster was shutdown in 2015.
===Bebo===
From the historical record: annoying little like to announce at high volume who they've just "met" on Bebo whilst using a public library computer.
Bebo was founded in 2005 and in 2008 AOL bought it for $850m, but by then Facebook was already on the rise and its membership plummeted. AOL sold it in 2010, in one of the most embarrassing business fails of a company that's not short of idiocy (remember the AOL-Time Warner merger?). Bebo went bankrupt in 2013, and its founders bought it for $1m (they had personally made $595m from the sale to AOL). Since then it has attempted to reinvent itself as a failed messaging app (wanna Blab, anybody?) and an e-sports hub.
===Get Closer===
Get Closer was an attempt by UK record chain HMV to cash in on the "success" of social networking sites by making people buy stuff. It seemed to be about encouraging you to become "friends" with as much music and films as you can, by making obscure (or not so obscure) connections between them, then buying them from HMV. Funnily enough, it completely died in the arse.http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/98088-hmv-shutters-getcloser-social-network
==Wannabes==
===Gab===
Gab is a social media network founded by Andrew Torba in August 2016 as an alternative to Twitter that proclaims itself to be for free speech. Despite such good intentions, it has unfortunately racked up an infamous reputation for being a breeding ground for white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, Islamophobes, cranks, crazy conspiracy theorists, alt-righters, Internet trolls and other unsavory creatures of the web. It was the outlet of choice for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers who would go on to kill 11 and injure 6.
===PewTube===
Created by Anthony Mayfieldhttp://money.cnn.com/2017/11/10/technology/culture/divided-we-code-alt-tech/index.html as an "alt-tech" alternative to YouTube, PewTube was a dumping ground for conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists/nationalists, and 4chan users. The site shut down in 2018.https://nkreider.com/news18/
===BitChute===
Created by Ray Vahey,https://torrentfreak.com/bitchute-is-a-bittorrent-powered-youtube-alternative-170129/ also as an "alt-tech" alternative to Youtube, BitChute is notable for claiming — perhaps spuriously"Bitchute claims to be a decentralized platform—that’s not true", Fredrick Brennan, Daily Dot, 2019-11-27 — to use peer-to-peer technology to avoid the high hosting costs of centralized servers streaming video. The site was founded on the principle of being very concerned about "censorship" at mainstream social media sites such as Youtube,https://twitter.com/bitchute/status/1166597249775886336?lang=en and as such is dedicated to "free speech" and "no censorship" (except, for some reason, "sexually explicit content" is verboten — can't have anything involving naughty bits, no siree!)Bitchute Community Guidelines, archive 2020 May 9 Consequently, as you might expect from such a stance, it has become a hot spot for white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, Islamophobes, cranks, crazy conspiracy theorists, alt-righters, Internet trolls and other creatures of the web actually unsavory enough to violate Youtube's content policies.https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/bitchute/ BitChute's official Twitter and Gab accounts are happy to retweet small samples of the content they host, much of which concerns a lot of complaining about mainstream social media content policieshttps://twitter.com/bitchute/status/1178807352159420416, along with various other alt-right political or paranoid-style topics.https://twitter.com/bitchute Due to the proliferation of extremist content (including one arrest as of 2019 for racist advocacy of terrorism made on the platform),https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/06/28/florida-man-arrested-racist-threats-once-attacked-african-american-police-officerhttps://www.sheriffleefl.org/how_do_i/learn_more_about/arrest_search/?view=inmateDetail&id=905163 BitChute has had problems keeping payment providers willing to support working with the site.https://bitchute.info/bitchute-suspended-by-patreon-but-theres-more/https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/11/14/paypal-blacklists-free-speech-youtube-alternative-bitchute/
===Parler===
Created by "libertarian engineer" John Matze in 2018 and funded by the right-wing billionaire Shannon Bond, Conservatives Flock To Mercer-Funded Parler, Claim Censorship On Facebook And Twitter. NPR, 14 November 2020. Parler (originally pronounced "par-lay" like the French word for "to speak,"Wikitionary entry for "parler" but currently pronounced like the English word "parlor""parlor" definition, dictionary.com as Matze quickly figured out the site's audience just can't handle those darn furriner words) is yet another so-called "free speech" "alt-tech" alternative... in this case an alternative to Twitter."Amid censorship fears, Trump campaign 'checking out' alternative social network" by Ben Schreckinger, Politico, 2019 May 28"MAGA Social Media Networks Are at War With Each Over a Potential Trump Account" by Will Sommer, Daily Beast, 2019 June 04"Parler wants to be the ‘free speech’ alternative to Twitter" by Mike Rothschild, Daily Dot, 2020 Jun 25"Parler: Is this Katie Hopkins’ new home for hatred?" by Steve Anglesey, New European, 2020 June 25 The site is very concerned about "censorship" at Twitter, to the point where they even released a "Declaration of Internet Independence","Social Media App Parler Releases ‘Declaration Of Internet Independence’ Amidst #Twexit Campaign" by John Scott Lewinski, Forbes, 2020 Jun 16 where, using Important Capitalized Words, the site admonishes the "Tech Tyrant" "Technofascists" of Twitter for stepping on "Freedoms", and promises to be a platform of "Free Speech" for "We The People.""A Declaration of Internet Independence", Parler email letter, archived on 2020 Jun 26 Indeed, Parler is a place where one is free to post conservative things like Jewish conspiracy theories, pro-slavery memes, and racial slurs without being booted off for being a racist dipshit."The Gross Hellscape That Awaits Ted Cruz on Parler" by Tim Miller and Hannah Yoest, The Bulwark, 2020 June 26 But espousing any left-wing viewpoints or accounts that criticize Parler? That's likely to be banned."Free speech app Parler is already banning leftists" by David Covucci, Daily Dot, 2020 Jun 30"As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like" by Mike Masnick, Techdirt, 2020 Jun 29 Originally, like Bitchute, sexually explicit content is verboten — can't have anything involving naughty bits, no siree!Parler Community Guidelines, archived on 2020 Jun 24 (Although they later revised their rules to allow anything that’s legal, predictably resulting in a flood of pornography posts.)"The Conservative-Loved Social Media Site Parler Is Being Overrun With Pornography" As you might expect from such a stance, it has become a conservative hot spot including white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, Islamophobes, cranks, crazy conspiracy theorists, alt-righters, Internet trolls, edgelords creating intentionally offensive parody accounts"Parler, a right-wing social media site, lures conservatives, but Trump sticks with Twitter — so far" by David Knowles, Yahoo News, 2020 June 22, and other creatures of the web actually unsavory enough to violate Twitter's content policies."This Twitter Alternative Was Supposed To Be Nicer, But Bigots Love It Already" by Isaac Saul, Forward, 2019 July 18 Curiously, for a site full of Islamophobic content, this also includes hardline Saudi Arabia nationalists and nationalist bots."Unhappy with Twitter, thousands of Saudis join pro-Trump social network Parler" by Elizabeth Culliford and Katie Paul, Reuters, 2019 June 13 
 who funded the app, said in a post on Parler that one of the reasons they helped start the site was to fight "the ever increasing tyranny & hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, & for the protection of free speech online"."Social media platform Parler gets backing from Mercer family - WSJ" by Reuters Staff, Reuters, 2020 November 14 Which is ironic since the Mercers funded Cambridge Analytica that had psychographic profiles of 70 million Americans,"Social app Parler apparently receives funding from the conservative Mercer family" by Kim Lyons, The Verge, 2020 November 14 and was used in Brexit and the 2016 election to elect Donald Trump (the latter because Robert Mercer wanted to escape paying taxes in order to shrink the United States government, possibly according to one source because he's irritated that the social safety net might actually (gasp!) help African-Americans)."Reclusive U.S. billionaire Robert Mercer helped Donald Trump win the presidency. But what is his ultimate goal?" by Keith Boag, CBC News Furthering their promise to protect users from data-mining, Parler wants a scan of your driver's license, passport, or other government identification in order to become a verified "Parler Citizen.""How do I Become a Parler Citizen?", support page for Parler, archived on 2020 November 17
Due to multiple incidents of posts that incited violence and were not removed by moderators, and complaints that Parler had been used to help plan and facilitate the attempted siege of the Capitol by right wing agitators on January 6, 2021, Google Play booted Parler from the Google Play store on January 8, 2021, due to the 2021 storming of the US Capitol."Google suspends right-wing app ‘Parler’ from Google Play Store" by Tristi Rodriguez, KRON 4, 2021 January 8 On the same date, Apple threatened to remove Parler from Apple's app store unless Parler came up with a violent content moderation policy;"Apple threatens to remove Parler from app store after deadly Capitol siege" by Shawna, 9To5Mac, 2021 January 8 having determined that Parler wasn't going to give a shit about moderating violent content, they gave Parler the boot a day later."Apple Has Banned Parler, The Pro-Trump Social Network, From Its App Store" by Adolfo Flores and John Paczkowski, Buzzfeed Nes, 2021 January 9 Likewise, Amazon (who was the web host for Parler) also decided to give Parler the boot on January 10, 2021, for failing to monitor violent content."mazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service" by John Paczkowski, Buzzfeed News, 2021 January 9 In March 2021, news reports revealed that Parler made more than 50 referrals of violent posts made by their users to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation in the weeks leading up to the January 6 riot. Many Parler users were not pleased.Jason Murdock, Parler Users Furious That Site Sent Violent Posts to FBI Ahead of Capitol Riot. Newsweek, 26 March 2021.
Parler founder and CEO John Matze was fired in late January 2021 by the company's board of directors, led by major stakeholder Rebekah Mercer.Sean Hollister, Parler’s CEO has been fired. The Verge, 3 February 2021. According to Matze, this was because he advocated a position that Parler would have to crack down on domestic terrorists and groups that incite violence if the company wanted to succeed in the future — a position Rebekah Mercer disagreed with."Parler C.E.O. Says He Was Fired" by Kellen Browning, New York Times, 2021 February 3"Parler CEO Is Fired After 'Constant Resistance' Inside The Conservative-Friendly Site" by Bobby Allyn, NPR, 2021 February 3 After Matze was fired, George Farmer, the husband of Candace Owens, took over the CEO position."Parler’s parent company has laid off a majority of its staff" by Makena Kelly, Verge, 2023 January 10
Less than six months after Elon Musk bought Twitter and began turning it into his own "free speech" platform, Parler was acquired by Starboard on 14 April 2023, and was immediately shut down:
===Diaspora===
Diaspora was touted as possible competition for Facebook, by offering a "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network."Join Diaspora's home pageFacebook alternative Diaspora rolls out first code Unlike Facebook, which relies on centralised servers paid for by the company's advertising revenue, Diaspora is decentralised so that one could choose which server they use or set up their own. Like e-mail, one could communicate with users of other servers, too. However, it has not seen much success in gaining a big user base, obviously an important thing for a social media service. After its highly successful Kickstarter, one of the four developers committed suicide. As a result Diaspora is a poor shadow of its intended result. In 2012, the original developers apparently concluded that they cannot bear the task of challenging Facebook, and declared Diaspora a "community project" instead.Announcement: Diaspora* Will Now Be A Community Project. Archived from the original at blog.diasporafoundation.org, 27 August 2012.
===MeWe===
Touted as a "disruptive Facebook alternative" in early 2018, this social network got quite a bit of news coverage while Facebook was suffering from allegations related to Cambridge Analytica. It claims not to use trackers or algorithms, or collect users data (even though it probably does). The company failed to explain how they planned to make money since their subscription service was shown to be unprofitable, but since they also failed to get any customers, this didn't seem to matter much. Other "disruptive Facebook alternatives" floated around during the same period, failing in every way to gain traction or threaten Facebook, even though everyone hates Facebook. Some of the users of its almost empty and supposedly unmonitored network are pretty dodgy, mainly lurking in the private groups.
===Ello===
Ello is the new Next Big Thing since Google+ and Diaspora failed to destroy Facebook. It seems to be based on fanatically idealistic principles, somehow intending to run a social network, with no visible income stream (besides flogging t-shirts) to support it. As the front page of the site states:
However, Ello has already pulled one over on Facebook, attracting many members of especially the LGBT community, when Facebook decided to selectively apply their "real names only" policy (which they've since walked backhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/2689418/facebook-walks-back-real-name-policy-after-protests-ello-exodus.html) thereby potentially outing, or worse, many members of the community. Ello's "choose any name you want" policy has become their biggest draw card for the time being.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/25/social-network-ello-gets-boost-after-facebook-boots-drag-queens/
===Voat===
Voat was a Reddit ripoff alternative founded in 2014 as "a community platform where you can have your say. No censorship". Originally, the website was WhoaVerse by Atif Colo/@Atko and Justin Chastain/PuttItOut prior to its current name. Its name is a portmanteau of goat and vote, the former of which was its mascot. 
The website had seen an influx of former Reddit users not satisfied with how the website is cracking down on hate speech, harassment, and trolling. The website had many racist sections which included but were not limited to: /v/Niggers, /v/NameTheJew, /v/GasTheKikes, /v/IslamHate, /v/IslamUnveiled, /v/HitlerWasRight, /v/altright, /v/Identitarian etc. Voat was one of the websites that made up the "alt-tech" (a cluster of alt-right websites as alternatives to mainstream websites).
A distinction was its view counter on posts. Between 2019 and 2020, an account was required to view content, which was lifted in mid-2020.
On December 21, 2020, Chastain announced that Voat would be shutting down that Christmas, citing an investor defaulting on their contract and the site running out of money."I Can't Keep it Up", Voat.co /v/Announcements, archived on 21 December 2020
===Clapper===
Clapper is, or was, another one of those "free speech" sites, this one being an imitation of Tiktok. After the collapse of Parler, MAGA hats and QAnoners started using Clapper en masse. However, eventually the platform decided they'd had enough and banned all QAnon-related content, citing the anti-vax attitudes common among its proponents as reasoning.Makena Kelly, Clapper permanently bans QAnon-related content, The Verge 11 Feb. 2021
===Truth Social===
After Donald Trump was booted from Twitter for his incitement of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, he kept saying he'd create an alternative to Twitter, and on Presidents' Day 2022 he did it, although the launch was a disaster with a wait list of over 1.5 million users.Trump's Truth Social app branded a disaster, James Clayton, BBC 4 April 2022 By May, it settled to about 500,000 daily active users, about 1/423rd of what Twitter had at the time (Twitter is not even that popular of a major social media site), and the app was still riddled with bugs that made it difficult to even sign up.Trump’s Truth Social Makes Saddest Announcement Of All Time, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair 17 May 2022 Its usage increased a bit around the time of the Mar-a-Lago raid against Trump, with many of its users naturally advocating for violence against government officials.Trump's Truth Social Sees Uptick in Users After FBI's Mar-a-Lago Search, Queenie Wong, CNET 19 August 2022 Despite claiming to be a "free speech" website, their terms of service are more strict than any major social media network, and they censor any posts about the Capitol riot or that are pro-choice.Truth Can’t Handle the Truth, Public Citizen Their equivalent to Tweets are called "Truths", as if the site can't get any more pretentious.I Wasted Hours Of My Life On Trump’s Truth Social So You Don’t Have To, Rafi Schwartz, MIC 27 July 2022 All in all, it's a great example of Badger's Law. As of August 2022, Truth Social became precarious as Trump's legal jeopardy continues to mount, its audience falls, and its lack of a guaranteed revenue source.Social faces financial peril as worry about Trump’s future grows: Payment disputes and a dwindling audience have fueled doubts about the former president’s Twitter clone by Drew Harwell (August 27, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
In June 2023, three of the company's venture capital investors were charged with insider trading (a felony) with regard to the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).Feds Charge Investors in Truth Social Deal With Insider Trading: The SEC accused three venture capitalists involved in the IPO for Trump’s Twitter knockoff of making $23 million off of non-public intel. by William Bredderman (Jun. 29, 2023) Daily Beast.
As a fun fact, Truth Social is basically just Mastodon (see "Fediverse") but it deliberately doesn't federate with anyone, so nobody who's not on Truth Social itself can see its posts. Most Mastodon instances block it anyway though, because, why not?
Funnily enough, despite Trump being allowed to return to Twitter soon after Elon Musk took over, he has decided that he'd rather stay in his echo chamber instead.Trump says he has no interest in returning to Twitter after reinstatement, Zach Schonfeld, The Hill 20 November 2022
In 2024, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Trade Commission, Gizmodo reported on the large number of complaints reported by Truth Social users of being scammed by other users, frequently in the form of (creating a fraudulent romance or emotional attachment, followed by money requests in the form of difficult-to-trace Bitcoin).Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams: Read the complaints submitted to the FTC by users of Donald Trump's social media platform. by Matt Novak (October 5, 2024) Gizmodo. Truth Social would seem to be the perfect setting for pig butchering since the cult of Trump means that the emotional attachment comes pre-installed.
=== Lemmygrad ===
Lemmygrad is a far-left forum founded in 2019 and based on free and open-source software. It is one of many instances of Lemmy.Lemmy LinuxReviews Its main users are, as its logo would suggest, tankies and Dengists.ProleWiki - Lemmygrad The discussion of this website is dominated by pro-China propaganda and apologia, racist attacks against Westerners,https://sh.itjust.works/c/meanwhileongrad and sectarian attacks against other leftists. While the site claims to exist as an alternative to corporatized platforms such as Reddit and other manifestations of the powers that be, the site will nonetheless dogmatically defend other corporate platforms so long as they are controlled by Chinese or Russian oligarchs instead.How is trusting CCTV, CGTN, etc., any different than trusting, say RFE or BBC? by RedStarCap (September 15, 2021) LemmygradHow to effectively counter imperialist lies on Xinjiang on the internet: A Guide by HappiCow69 (March 10, 2021) Lemmygrad
Lemmygrad functions as a host and area of coordination for a number of other pro-China crank communities and projects, with the website being a place where many tankies go in order to attract followers to their propaganda work.Utkucan Balci, Michael Sirivianos and Jeremy Blackburn (2023). A Data-driven Understanding of Left-Wing Extremists on Social Media
===Christian networking sites===
At least fourteen Christian networking sites have sprung up, many of which are marketed at Christian-themed versions of popular sites like Pinterest (Godinterest) and YouTube (GodTube). They emphasize their clean, family-friendly nature — which mostly goes only as far as removing "offensive" content.
"If you post a picture on this site, everyone in the picture must be modestly dressed (by our standards), not promoting any sinful activity (drinking, smoking, tatoos, gambling, etc), and not crude in any way (sodomites, abortion pics, etc.)," says Big Baptist while Christianblog says: "We have dedicated volunteers who review each and every blog entry to make sure that all content that is posted is family safe and Christian based." — in fact they all say different versions of this, so we won't bore you with minor variations in wording. Of the others, ChristUnion has found an appropriate Biblical quote as its strap — Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ — see, the Bible foretold social networking sites! And therefore, it's true. Ditty Talk allows linking to Myspace, which kind of misses the point. The scarily-named FaithFreaks has "a network of filters and monitors", so they're either control freaks or sound engineers. Christian.com is "heavily monitored" and says It’s not "My" space; It’s "His" space! JCFaith's "about us" page is mysteriously blank, except for phone commercials.
===Conservative networking sites===
There are a few conservative social networking site as well. Let's Get This Right promises to link to "100's (sic) of conservative resources" and has forums, some of whose posts get up to an incredible sixAs of 17 May 2009. replies. Tea Party Community is the tea party answer to Facebook. Facebook is full of liberals that just love to report conservative pages and get them removed from Facebook (Despite the fact that conservative pages frequently have a higher number likes than liberal pages. However this is clearly a liberal plot to create a bunch of deep cover liberals that are trying to smear the good name of conservatives through the mud. Just ask any conservative!). Another conservative social network is Connect with Liberty. "ReaganBook" was shut down after the completely predictable deluge of Liberal trollsThe swift death of ReaganBook, the Facebook for patriots, and came back as "Freedombook", which was invitation only before it fell over and died. An option for mostly gun related talk is gunchannels.com. 
The "Tea Party Community", also known as Teabagger Facebook, was another iteration of the American Right's attempt to create its own parallel world, this time by copying Facebook. Naturally it attracted a cohort of parodists, which led it to announce that the FBI would be watching out for... ooh, something. But you better watch your step, liberals! Unsurprisingly it was accused of being extremely racist towards Muslims in particular, and it's rumored that simply signing up with a Muslim sounding name will get you banned.http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3535600 As of July 2020, attempts to access the site via the .com or .org URLs are auto-redirected to a Tea Party Community Facebook group. Oh, the irony.
==Cancer?==
In early 2009, during their quest to split the entire inanimate world into things that cause cancer and things that cure cancer, the Daily Mail ran a story essentially entitled "Facebook causes cancer"How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer somewhere. This was based on a report by Dr Aric Sigman in the Journal of the Institute of Biology. Noted science writer, blogger, and columnist Ben Goldacre then refuted the claims, stating that Sigman had selectively quoted his evidence and ignored all the evidence that social networking use had no effect — or even a positive effect — on people's social lives, particularly those suffering from loneliness. Goldacre later appeared on Newsnight specifically to tear Sigman a new arsehole over the scaremongering.Goldacre's face halfway through Sigman talking is especially priceless.
...Whether social media is figuratively cancerous is up to your personal interpretation.
=="Nym wars"==
"Nym wars" — short for "pseudonym wars" — is the term applied to the effort by social networks to end the practice of allowing subscribers to use a screen name that is not their legal one.Kaste, Martin. "Who Are You, Really? Activists Fight For Pseudonyms", National Public Radio (USA) website, posted 28 September 2011, accessed 29 September 2011. While Facebook discourages the use of pseudonyms, the nym wars really took off in the summer of 2011 when Google's new social network, Google Plus, prohibited the use of any pseudonyms, and Google employees even suggested that everyone start reporting questionable names. Then, to ensure that this policy was not being abused, Google Plus began aborting accounts with screen names that seemed to be even remotely pseudonymous, e.g. not sounding sufficiently white American.Ross, Nick. "How much has Facebook just damaged Google Plus?", Australian Broadcasting Corporation website (technology and games blog), posted 14 September 2011, accessed 29 September 2011. This trashed the site's reputation with its initial seed audience of techies, and may have been the factor that crippled it out the gate.
Google claimed that real names encouraged better social behaviour. This is something people commonly assume about real-name policies — but no-one, including Google, has ever supplied actual evidence of this, rather than personal feeling and assertion. In fact, what evidence there is points the opposite way: South Korea required commenters on sites with over 100,000 users to supply their Resident Registration Number (national identity number), and this reduced malicious comments by ... 0.9%.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011123001526.html A 2007 UK study showed a real names requirement made people more obnoxious.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/12/guardianweeklytechnologysection.privacy So if anyone makes this claim, ask for actual evidence: if they provide it, they'll be the first.
Yonatan Zunger from Google described in 2014 what actually happened, and its consequences (particularly in interacting with groups such as Gamergate):https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq
Every issue Zunger notes there was raised internally at Google before Google+ launched in 2011, and ignored by management who were determined to push through a Real Names policy on no data and no thinking it through.
== Social media consultants ==
Social media consultants/strategists/experts/gurus help businesses manage their social networking profile. Since creating a Facebook page and Twitter account and then hiring college students to maintain them isn't rocket science, social media consultants often promote their services with hefty doses of bullshit and techno babble. Although not all social media consultants are scammers, the trend of large corporations spending vast amounts of cash in order to establish a social media "presence" has created somewhat of a Gold Rush atmosphere where snake oil merchants flourish.Social media scammers: be careful who you hireStephen Baker Beware Social Media Snake Oil Bloomberg Business Social media consultants may also offer a kind of "digital public relations" service to create buzz, spread stories, and polish their client's reputations, replacing the need for traditional PR agencies.Learn Social Media Strategies for Effective Public Relations www.prsa.org
==See also==
*Web of trust
*Internet relay chat — the original social network, still going strong-ish
==External links==
*The Fall of Pinterest
*The gates of hell have opened.
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Antifeminism
Category:Internet culture