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Facebook

Supports RSS Feeds: No

Owned By: Meta

Facebook is what I consider to be the sort of standard when it comes to social media. Myspace was slightly before my time, but when I think of "Social Media" I think of how Facebook has it formatted - you can make posts of whatever length you want, people can comment on those posts, react to the posts, or share them. You can post photos, videos, sort of whatever.

I personally think Facebook is sort of dying out. People my age don't really seem to be using it except for it's chat features (the Messenger App). I also don't think the younger generations are interested in it. When I was in High School someone was viewed as weird for not having Facebook, and now I don't think it's viewed as oddly. Often when I check facebook it is just full of older people posting or misinformation. It's a shame too, since I'd love to stay in touch more with people. But not many really seem to use it much anymore.

Twitter (x)

Supports RSS Feeds: No

Owned By: Elon Musk

Twitter is a bit of an interesting one because I never used it a terrible amount. Similar to facebook in that you can comment, react, or share posts, it's different in the fact you're limited to how much you could type. The amount has increased over the years, but the idea with twitter was always short form writing.

Since Elon took over Twitter about 2 years ago at time of writing, there have been more and more people leaving Twitter. It's what prompted me to leave it almost completely (I still have an account I check once in a while). Every now and then there seems to be more waves of people leaving. Right around the time Elon took over, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads began to rise up or start accepting new people, to give folks a place to go who were leaving Twitter. I believe that was the time I also found Cohost.

My understanding is Twitter was already a pretty toxic place for people to be, and has only continued to get worse.

Instagram

Supports RSS Feeds: I don't think so

Owned By: Meta

Instagram is a bit different from the places mentioned so far. It's designed to primarily be a visual platform - Photos and videos are the primary focus, with text only there to give descriptions to the photos or videos. People can like and comment on posts, but you can only share posts directly to individual friends, or to your Story, which is a separate spot from the main feed.

Since the introduction of TikTok, Instagram has also featured "Reels", which are its version of short form, vertical, video content.

I often see people use Instagram more than Facebook at this point. It's a nice way to see photos from friends and family.

Snapchat

Supports RSS Feeds: No

Owned By: Snap Inc.

Snapchat is the most different from the above platforms so far. It is another visual focused app, but anything you send lasts only until the person opens it by default, up to 24 hours if you enable certain settings, or potentially permanently if you save something in a chat. Snapchat is designed for you to take a quick photo or video, send it to friends or family, and move on with your day. The content is not permanent by design, and so once your friends or family opens the image or video, it is then gone forever.

Snapchat features Stories, which were copied by a lot of other social media sites, but basically a place you can put a photo or video that's separate from the main feed, and can last up to 24 hours I believe on Snapchat. You can also message people directly, and those messages by default disappear after being viewed. You can long press on messages though to save the message in the chat for forever. One other thing to note about Snapchat is it notifies the other person if you take a screenshot of anything.

Snapchat is still very popular as far as I can tell. When I was in college a few years ago, a lot of people would give out Snapchat info as a way to contact them rather than things like a phone number or Facebook. What was wild to me is some people also tried to use it for coordinating things like Group Projects, which, to me, feels like the worst place to do so.

Bluesky

Supports RSS Feeds: Yes

Owned By: Bluesky Social, PBC

Bluesky was created by the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. It is basically Twitter, except decentralized. There's been a push recently to have decentralized platforms, the idea being they're easier to manage and moderate, as well as there's no one failure point. For example, if Facebook was to go down, that's simply it. Everything on Facebook is gone. With a decentralized platform, different people are running servers that all talk to each other. So there's no one spot to fail that'll take the whole system down, just individual servers that could fail. Bluesky uses the AT Protocol for servers to talk to one another.

One other thing of note for Bluesky is that, as far as I can tell, it shows content chronologically rather than algorithmically. A lot of the big social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) show you content based on what an algorithm thinks you should see. These algorithms have the main goal of increasing engagement and time spent in app. Unfortunately, one thing that gets humans to engage a lot is anger, and so often this can lead to your timeline making you angrier and angrier. It also will show you more and more of things you agree with, causing you to enter a sort of echo chamber online or be continually drawn towards one ideology or another. A chronological feed, by contrast, shows you content in order that people you followed posted or shared it.

Of the decentralized platforms, I think Bluesky is the easiest one for people to migrate to. I'll talk more about the difficulties of decentralized platforms with Mastodon, but Bluesky has its own server you can just sign up on immediately and get going.

I personally don't use Bluesky much myself, but I do follow a few people via RSS feed. If you copy and paste the link to someones profile into your RSS Feed reader, it should recognize it. You can learn more about RSS Feeds here.

Update 11/20/24:I have found out that on Bluesky, people keep lists of other people you may want to block. You can mass subscribe to these lists to try and help filter the content you see. In my mind, this is sort of similar to how a Pi Hole works but for Bluesky. A mega list of the lists you may want to use to mass block people can be found in this Google doc.

Mastodon

Supports RSS Feeds: Yes

Owned By: N/A

Mastodon is another decentralized platform, similar to Twitter (though I think the text limit is higher). It works basically exactly like twitter does. It uses the ActivityPub protocol for servers to talk to each other. Mastodon also, as far as I can tell, shows you items chronologically rather than algorithmically.

Mastodon suffers, I think, from being too complicated for the average user. When you go to sign up you need to choose a server to join. And while there are plenty to choose from, this can be sort of overwhelming and I think turn people off immediately. Once you're actually signed up and in the app, I don't think it's much more difficult than other social media sites. The only other thing that is weird is you need someones username and the instance name they're on to follow them, rather than just username.

Mastodon is another one which I don't think I've used much at all. I do follow a few people via RSS feed though.

TikTok

Supports RSS Feeds: I don't think so

Owned By: ByteDance

TikTok, despite being a security nightmare, has become (as far as I can tell) the most popular Social Media site. TikTok is designed for short form, vertical video content. I believe when it started it was 15 seconds or less, though it has increased that limit since then. It's designed to quickly digest content, and swipe to the next piece of content.

TikTok to me seems like something that pretty much everyone has on their phone and uses. I personally try to avoid it like the plague (given the privacy concerns), however for most people this seems to not be concerning enough to not use TikTok. You can find all sorts of content there - from funny videos, to educational ones, to baking recipes.

Like most social media, TikTok shows you content algorithmically. I personally dislike this, and I explain some of the drawbacks back in the section.

YouTube

Supports RSS Feeds:Yes

Owned By: Alphabet (Google)

YouTube is a bit of a weird one to me to be considered "Social Media", but with its Shorts I think it fits the description. If you don't know, YouTube is a video sharing platform. It has videos about almost any topic you can think of, it lets you comment and like videos, and you can create playlists of videos you like. It also has a shorts feature which is similar to TikTok - an area designed primarily for shot form, vertical video content.

It's one of those things that, at this point, I think everyone knows of and uses YouTube. The only real issue I've seen with YouTube is the concern that is is really the only place online to upload videos for free. Meaning if YouTube ever goes away, or makes a change creators don't like, there's really nowhere else for them to go. I have seen a few creators (like Watcher) start to create their own platforms, in order to receive more funding from fans, as well as to be able to share more type of content, without worrying about YouTube demonetizing it.

If you're interested in following someone via RSS feed, you can put the link to their channel into your RSS Feed reader.

Discord

Supports RSS Feeds: I don't think so

Owned By: Discord Inc

Discord is another sort of weird one. It doesn't fit what I imagine as a Social Media site, more a messaging service, however I think it's big enough and does enough things differently than a normal messaging service that it should be included. If you don't know, Discord is a service largely used by gamers for messaging, voice chat, or video chat. If you use Slack for work, it's pretty much the same sort of idea. Discord allows you to create Servers in which you can organize it however you want. You can make voice or text channels, and give different levels of permissions to access things. There are a lot of servers that exist for different games, podcasts, groups that feature a sort of general channel where people who like the content just sort of hang out and chat over text (or sometimes via voice chat).

One thing that concerns me about Discord is how many developers or people use it instead of a website or message board or something. It can be extremely hard to find information in Discord. A lot harder than a dedicated website or forum. On top of that, because the content exists in Discord and not on the web, if Discord should ever go away (or the owner of a server decides to nuke it), all that information is now lost. I understand why people do this - a lot of people have discord already and so it's easy for people to be on it. It's also free and easier for most than putting together a website or something else. It just feels like a bad choice for things that maybe should be archived more permanently.

Threads

Supports RSS Feeds:I don't think so

Owned By: Meta

Threads is Twitter but made by Facebook. It ties in tightly with Instagram, so that it's easy to just create a Threads account using your Instagram info. Also if you create a Threads account, it will automatically follow anyone you follow on Instagram on Threads (if they have a Threads account). Instagram will also show Thread previews on your timeline in Instagram.

I don't really have much to say on Threads. I think it's not as good as Bluesky or Mastodon, but can't really explain why. It is easier to sign up for though if you already have a Facebook or Instagram account.

Reddit

Supports RSS Feeds: I think so

Owned By:Mixed

Reddit is another one that I think people would call a social media site, but doesn't really fit in my head of what I'd consider one. If you don't know, Reddit is a site that is divided up into subreddits. Subreddits generally revolve around a central theme (r/comics being for comics for example). If there's anything you're interested in, there's probably a subreddit for it. Your main feed is comprised of subreddits you follow. On account creation, Reddit will have a handful of subreddits it subscribes you to so your feed is filled with something to begin with. Users can make posts in any subreddit (some do have restrictions on posting), and others can see the posts and upvote them if they like them, or downvote them if they don't. You can also comment on posts.

Reddit is really good for finding help for any issue, given so many people use it and there are so many different subreddits. Often when I'm googling a tech issue I'm having I'm adding "reddit" to the end of it to try and get a good result to come up. A trick that's becoming more commonplace. I don't use Reddit much anymore (there were some protests about some changes a few years ago...I forget about what honestly at this point) however when I do use it it's to either find a solution for something or post about a solution to something. Funnily enough, it happened recently where I had an issue with something, I googled the answer and found a reddit post that was exactly what I needed! It turned out to be my own post I made a few years prior.

LinkedIn

Supports RSS Feeds:I don't think so

Owned By: Microsoft

This one pains me to put on this list, however, I do think people use LinkedIn as a social media platform. LinkedIn is a platform that allows you to put your resume, and it connects with a lot of job hunting sites. It allows you to easily import your resume info on other sites that you may be looking for jobs on. Not only does it let you do that, but there is also a timeline where people you're connected with can share their thoughts, their accomplishments, or anything really (though it does tend to be work related info). You can react, comment, and share peoples posts. It also features a job listings section on its site itself where you can look for new jobs.

Personally, I only ever go on linkedin to update my resume. I see other people use it much more often to post about things, or general trends, or whatever and I just... don't get it. I don't really get using LinkedIn as a social media platform. But, some people do.

Tumblr

Supports RSS Feeds:Yes

Owned By:Automattic (Wordpress)

When preparing to write this post, I asked some friends if they could think of any social media sites I had forgotten, and one of them mentioned Tumblr. I can't believe I forgot Tumblr! If you don't know, Tumblr is a blogging site I believe is the easiest way to describe it. You can have long form posts, react to them, share them, comment on them. Often though Tumblr was much more a visual site - most posts I saw featured some art, photo, or video!

If my memory serves, a lot of people fled Tumblr back in 2018 when the site banned adult content. I think it has since reversed or loosened its restrictions, and it seems like some people have remained on the site to keep it going strong. I've run into a fair amount of people online where instead of having their own websites/ blogs, they just use tumblr for it instead. It even has RSS capabilities where you can just put the link to someones profile into your RSS feed reader and it should take it. I follow a few people this way.

Website League

Supports RSS Feeds:Yes

Owned By: N/A

Okay, this is a small one that I don't think most people have heard of, but I wanted to mention it because I use it. It's another decentralized platform, and it uses the ActivityPub protocol (like Mastodon) for instances to talk to each other (Or, I think this to be true. They mention on their website that they use the Fediverse that Mastodon uses). The biggest difference between the Website League and Mastodon or Bluesky is that the Website League was created by folks leaving Cohost as it shut down with the goal of creating another place sort of like Cohost. On the Website League, numbers are removed as much as possible from the site (reblog numbers, likes, etc.) as well as feeds are chronological. The goal is also to keep each instance small, so they're easier to moderate.