Cut the gordian knot. Just don't all centralize in one place and you no longer all need to follow the same rules.
That said, if you're using those platforms for monetary reasons then you'll have to stay there. Network effect. But that's for the best: profit motive is eventually toxic to community.
It is and it isn't. Sure, you can run a website, forum, blog, whatever and host it yourself much easier than in the 90s. But people look for you and connect on the popular platforms they frequent: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
Back in the day even normies would pick up some tech and talk to you on IRC or USENET. Nowadays, it's the opposite, the bias is in the other direction. Even hackers are on Slack and Twitter.
Is that true?
Peak IRC users appears to be 10 million (2013) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Decline, Citation needed.
Pretending that all IRC users were in the US... That's ~3% of the population.
Usenet is arguably going strong (daily volume has exploded but isn't a useful metric here though. Can't find active users from cursory look).
~70% of US population are 'active' users of Facebook. This counts people that have only used it once in the last 30 days. And it's not a dichotomy - I don't think people have an issue stepping outside of facebook, as long as there are no barriers to entry.
Just playing devil's advocate, I don't disagree with you in general. I appreciate that my stats are lazy and blunt, but it shows how relatively minuscule the usage of IRC & Usenet were 2 decades ago, and that while direct messaging might be in a more 'walled garden' state, traffic to self-federated content is generally still as attainable. Perhaps 'eternal september' has swung so far to the other side that the old non-internet users of the 90s have funnelled through AOL and out the other side to Facebook (and notably, it's easier to grab traffic from FB users than non-internet users), while the core tech demographic has remained 'in the middle'.
Also was careful to state "stats are lazy and blunt"
But you're right that the bias has shifted, e.g. long twitter threads (with no real archivability) vs. a blog post.
Really the question of the choice is "Do you care about the audience at large or the way you and your small niche want it more?"
Dont you see the bars on the windows and doors?
Yup. Captchas are everywhere. Javascript is everywhere.
Finding a website that loads without having to enable javascript or go through captcha is a breath of relief. They do exist.
This is a much more serious problems in other fields, where you can only reach your crowd through YouTube or Instagram.
That being said, having a crowd wasn't even a thing back then. Platforms have given immensely talented people a free soapbox to show the world all sorts of things. Anyone can share something nowadays, not only people who know HTML and a few other things.
And when you use other's services, like, say, reading an article hosted at 'thenation.com', a site which attempts to block you from reading unless you run their javascript and CSS, use a browser with tools that allow you to toggle things like JS and CSS to read it anyway. Then re-share the article as plain text, https://write.as/tg3o7a6dfa5ck.md
And always remember: Lurking is good, https://i.imgur.com/7NYQ17y.mp4