If you wonder why you are in a particular place maybe you need to ask what questions brought you there. In this case, it's
"Is there an equivalent to LiveJournal and preferably in the Fediverse?"

LiveJournal, you may recall, was a popular blog and discussion site back in the 2000s. It's still going in some form I believe and also forked to Dreamwidth Studios, though at a time that Facebook was gaining traction so a lot of science fiction fandom just went over to FB.

Because that's what I know LJ for - the SF fandom community. There were lots of us on there. And because LJ had the following:
- Personal blogging - use it as a diary
- Discussion groups - which could be public or locked
It was flexible, in a way that FB is also. You could maintain that FB operates in the same way as LJ, with its mix of a 'wall' (do people still call it that? Did they ever?) and groups which may be by local area or by interest. It's just that the demographic was very different with FB having a more generalist audience - so generalist that a significant proportion of the world's population is now on it. When did the internet become reality rather than just commenting on it? When, as EM Forster might put it, did the machine start? Around the mid-2010s I'd say.

My nephew, who is in his late 20s, tells me that people of his generation use Instagram but not FB. But you can't put long text on IG. Nor does it do groups.
That's a different discussion though, one about Pixelfed and whether it will have groups, to bring it closer to a Flickr replacement. Pixelfed I do use, and you can have up to 2,000 characters of text with a picture but people don't go there for the text. 2,000 characters is 350-400 words in English and probably similar in other languages which is ok - we're up to just over 1,800 characters now so if this were PF I'd have to be slowing down right now.

The other thing re FB, which also makes me dip into Goodreads while mainly using Storygraph for book reviewing, and look at Reddit while not really using Lemmy, is the sheer number of users which translates into niche communities. (same in Reddit. With Goodreads that is "pretty much any book in existence is on there and there are lots of reviews to look at"). You know the saying - "Build it and they will come." Well, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I once worked in a community centre and my main dealings with the organisation that ran it was management asking me "why don't you think the centre gets more people going there?" My main answer was, It's in the wrong place. If it was the other side of town, nearer the park and the well-heeled areas and the swimming pool, we'd get traction. But on a more run-down side of town known only for its supermarket (drive in, get groceries, drive away) it wasn't going to thrive.

Not wishing for a moment to sound negative, though. The virtue of Federation is its flexibility - for example Pixelfed is getting so many new users at the moment. If it's in the right place then build it and they will come and they will stay.

I think we’re at a social media tipping point.

The TikTok ban (and subsequent overturn) has been… interesting, to say the least. Once people decided the TikTok ban was real, they flocked to a Chinese app that is named after Mao’s book of communist propaganda as a “screw you” to the American government. Cultural exchange was happening in an unprecedented way and added fuel to the fire of class consciousness ignited by the United Healthcare CEO situation. TikTok went dark for half a day before it was brought back with a “thank you President Trump” message that people are rightfully clocking as propaganda.

At the same time, folks have fled Elon Musk’s Twitter that has been enshittified to hell.

Zuckerberg, also kissing Trump’s ass, has decided to roll back harassment protections for queer and trans people, and women (probably other marginalized groups too, tbh). He’s gotten rid of (to the extent it actually existed) fact checking on Facebook because apparently facts are too biased. And while it’s (temporarily) discontinued to my knowledge, Meta was also introducing AI profiles in order to drive engagement, as opposed to genuine conversations, because the former lines his pockets more.

I think this is a tipping point. People are realizing that these tech companies have our worst interests at heart. They fuck around with our data, they keep us numb to the suffering that we and others experience, and they drive us apart. They have been valuable tools for disseminating information and building communities in some capacities. But I think we’re entering a new era.

I have questions more than anything. I want to get off most of these platforms (Meta-owned, Twitter, TikTok). Do I find alternatives? The fediverse stuff (google it) seems interesting, though there’s a learning curve and without large scale uptake, not going to find the same kind of interactions we’re used to having on social media. Does going to an alternative just mean giving a different capitalist money? How are we going to organize? How are we going to disseminate information?

I hope this drives us to get into real-life communities more. I hope people take that lesson from this. We’ve lost that skill and I hope we relearn it. In the interim, I hope we can invest some time in some good discussions around how we divest from the capitalists’ tech while maintaining connections for each other for information sharing. I’d love feedback from anyone else thinking about these things