Totally happy with them. I don't use any of them, and that's working really well for me.

If someone can create an algorithm that doesn’t instantly favorite bots that reply on every post then sure. However, yet to see this happen

I think unless you were to 100% ban "influencer" crap and ads, which is where you'd have to go to make money or compete, its a waste of time.

why? Go for a walk in the woods instead. Spend more time IRL.

social networks are part of real life now

The networks themselves always were, well before Zuckerberg, before Babbage and Ada dreamed of a mechanical computer, before Lucy got fossilised.

The apps are increasingly cringe, and even when someone wins a monoploy so hard their app is defacto mandatory they get rejected and mocked by their own users for presenting content like they're a third wheel on a date who only wants to talk about their hobby and doesn't get a hint.

Peak actually-being-social is somewhere between IRC and slack, or if you really like long-form, Dreamwidth. If you've got e.g. a thousand followers, it isn't social media any more, it is parasocial media.

YouTube at least were honest. Broadcast yourself, I remember them saying.

Maybe so, or sadly so, for many people. I still have a LinkedIn account (I login once or twice s week), a Twitter account (once a week) and a bsky account (once a month).

I can’t believe I used to have Facebook’s app on my phone.

Mostly spending time on Mastodon these days, which is only made tolerable by its lack of capabilities.