> There's no "good" social media and there never was. As much as I hate Facebook/Meta and everything it stands for, I got a lot of value out of Facebook and I

> There's no "good" social media and there never was. As much as I hate Facebook/Meta and everything it stands for, I got a lot of value out of Facebook and Instagram during my teenage years. I lived pretty much in the middle of nowhere, not very walkable/bikeable but also without any other kids my age to hang out nearby. My school was really small (I graduated with a class of less than 30 people) and there weren't many like-minded students. During the 2000s, Facebook was an absolute lifeline for me. It's where I lived. It's where I met new friends. It's where I shared (cringey) posts about my passions, my interests, books and TV shows and movies and games. And my friends talked about that cringey stuff with me on Facebook, over chat and in comments. But that was a world before Facebook killed the chronological feed, before they introduced ads in the feed (remember sidebar ads? Not enough $$$ to pay tens of thousands of engineers, I suppose), before they started "recommending" content. They were still manipulative, but they provided a valuable service. Anyway, I just wanted to say that early-stage simple social media was useful to many people, and that's likely why late-stage social media remains popular today -- people want that core functionality. I made lifelong friends on there, just like you did on blogs, forums, and IRC. At the early stage, it wasn't about influencers and ads. Just slightly-more-than-local attention seeking.