My current short, medium and long-form online sharing.

Social media is in constant flux, so where do I participate?

Social media is in constant flux. We all only have so much time, so unless being an online creator is part of your job you can’t do all of them.

I’ve authored articles for blogs since the mid-1990’s before it was even called that. When Twitter was created I joined, thinking of it as a more widely published RSS feed where I would link to longer articles. I joined Facebook to participate in policy conversations around Network Neutrality, and over time ended up connecting to other communities and family as well.

Twitter and Facebook have taken a different direction recently: Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk who has ideological beliefs that are quite contrary to my own. With the new US regime taking over, the CEO of Meta (which owns Facebook) has publicly adopted a view of “free speech” meaning “speech free of responsibility" where extreme harmful speech is going to be protected over trying to enable civility.

I’m aware that “freedom from responsibility” is a core part of what Western culture thinks of as freedom, with a focus on individualism, but there are some individuals and media companies that are more extreme than others.

I have used a variety of platforms for long-form articles, including self-hosted sites using Open Source blogging platforms (phpSlash, Drupal) and custom software before that. Most recently I was on Blogger which was purchased by Google in 2003.

While no service will be perfect, I’ve decided to move what I previously wrote on Twitter (short-form) and Facebook (medium-form) to other platforms. I’m now on Bluesky as well as a Mastodon host for short-form microblogging, and use Substack for medium-form note writing and long-form blogging.

From the https://r.flora.ca home page you will see the long-form articles, which is a replacement for what I was doing on Google’s blogger. You will also see a list on the side of other social media sites I participate on.

Please take a look at the “notes” listed on the top which have shorter-form writing and sharing of what other people are writing about. This is where short and medium-form conversations happen, overlapping with some of what might otherwise have been on Twitter (or other micro-blogging platforms) or Facebook.

I’m a text person, which is why you won’t likely ever see me on sites like TikTok. Video and audio are not mediums I feel very comfortable in.

I’m curious to read what social media sites other people are on, and why they have chosen each (or even if they felt like they had a choice).