My Ideal Social Media Platform

Mirrored and edited from my Mastodon.

My ideal platform Frankensteins the mechanics of Tumblr, the size and sensibilities of Aethy, and the blocklists/follow lists/feed customization of Bluesky.

I do like the direction things are going generally speaking, I just never cared much for anything about Twitter and sites that attempt to emulate it exhaust me. Smallweb is of course my number one pick and I think I'd adore Dreamwidth if it had a more robust drafting system and a slightly more social userbase (maybe I'm just not using it right?). It also would be nice if it were more responsive, but that's just me picking nits again 🙂‍↕️

Now stick with me here and imagine we're in a fantasy universe where social media is about having fun and staying connected. Are you with me here? Great. What I want from this hypothetical platform is as follows:

• Chill, preferably small userbase. Tumblr emulates this by arranging itself in small-ish circles
• Non-exist OR opt-in algorithm
• Anonymity and privacy! You are not getting my phone number, full legal name, etc. You should not expect to see my likes or who I am following
  • Private posting options. The ability to choose your audience, lock your account, etc
  • The ability to permanently delete posts from the platform (be cautionate about Bluesky)
  • No focus on my IRL identity, actually. My personal priorities place "playing with my toys" very high and I am simply the disembodied hand playing with my toys
• Robust tagging system for likes and dislikes (Aethy/Mastadon in particular does an incredible job of this! Second only to AO3, which is not a social media platform and shall not be counted)
  • To add to that, clear warnings and barriers to entry that keep younger audiences out
• High character limits on posts (I need the option to babble! I need to read others' babbles!)
• Emphasis on the joy of creating/experiencing as opposed to the final product! I hate the pressure to create, often for monetization. I also like not having to catch up on 30,000 posts an hour since I end up feeling pressured to participate in order to show support to my friends. This is a bad feeling. Keep it slow!
• Fandom presence
• Lenience towards NSFW content, but also . . .
• Emphasis on things that aren't porn
• No AI scraping

The following are also very nice!

• The option to mute users while still allowing them to interact. Temporary mutes too. (I love you Aethy and AO3)
• Good culture around blocking/curation
• Robust customization features
  • Custom emojis
  • Custom CSS
  • It actually depresses me when I am able to customize the colors and nothing else. I would much rather be neck-deep in decade-old documentation trying to find consistent CSS selectors. I should have to sift through archelogically significant layers of vestigal frontendmatter from 2006
    • I do begrudgingly understand the challenges of reproducing this effect artificially
• Do not attempt to influence me. I cannot be influenced
• RSS options for when I don't want to bother with the platform itself
• Responsiveness and mobile-friendly options that ideally don't force you to use an app
• No ads. This would be a higher priority, but outside of my fantasy universe I acknowledge that maintaining servers is expensive

I will probably add to this, and I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks as well!