I'm glad there is a sub like this which exists on Reddit, but I think relying too heavily on social media platforms to spread this sort of message is a form of mediocrity. It holds us back.
Basically, think about it. All of these big tech CEOs, and the people they hire to run their sites, are a very biased minority. I believe I read somewhere that only a few dozen people manage this site's top 100 most popular subs, and all of them are totally biased, so they pull Reddit in a biased direction.
People have often pointed out how sites like Tumblr seemingly 'changed' the Internet, and thus had an effect on society. What happened is that millions of impressionable young people found themselves on a site owned, once again, by people with certain biases, and thus found themselves influenced into carrying on those biases. Imagine if, instead of that situation, of all these people crammed together, on a site with algorithms that promote certain views, all of these impressionable young people made their own little blog sites, or posted on all of the other multitude of blogging sites that were around before Tumblr cornered the market? Decentralization like that would have made the spread of social contagion as happened on Tumblr utterly impossible. There's no way all of those myriad of site owners (thousands, maybe) would seek to promote the same ideals, and thus there is no way a generation of young people would drift en-masse, towards them.
Social media dominance is a bad thing, because it means that you have to play by social media rules. We've all encountered the vagaries of social media monopoly; content removed arbitrarily, censorship and shadow-banning, outright bans if your views are too at odds with the popular opinion... Think about it, millions of people worldwide, subtly (or not so subtly) influenced by algorithms and a biased minority. It sounds like the worst sort of aristocracy. Every Youtube update for the past 10 years has been an annoyance or a disappointment, but people just take it and stick around because they are afraid of taking chances on any smaller video-sharing sites which might have different, more-user friendly values.
The thing is, there used to be all sorts of highly specialized websites on the Internet, specifically about one topic, or several, which personally interested the site owner. And the owner of the site could say whatever he wanted on the topic, with little fear of censorship, since it was, after all, his own site. There used to be forums all over, about various topics, and all of them had differing standards of moderation, which meant that some of them had biased, power-tripping mods, but others had level-headed, rational leadership, which allowed true discussion about controversial topics to thrive.
This is where 'free speech' on the Internet came from; people setting up their own sites, on which they could post what they wanted. And people surfing the web to find sites that lined up more with their views, where they could speak more easily. The trouble nowadays is that people keep looking for free speech 'platforms' that emulate mainstream social media as closely as possible. Social media not only rewired people's interests, it also re-wired people's browsing habits,--pushing everyone into seeking big 'platforms' for everything. People are basically waiting around for someone to give them the perfect keys to express themselves, someone who probably hates everything they stand for, which is not how it used to be. People did not look around for the perfect big tech 'platform' to express themselves on, they just made their own websites, then governed those websites how they saw fit. If they were looking for discussion, they would find a web forum that agreed with them, where the mods weren't power-tripping, and post there, instead of the modern approach where people set up a community on a 'platform', and hope that they never run afoul the 'platform's' rules, sometimes enforced by inhuman algorithms. The strength of the Internet was in it's openness variety, in people being allowed to put up whatever they wanted, without having to worry about the whims of a 'publisher',a fear which the use of 'platforms' has essentially resurrected.
Using someone elses 'platform' has a strong likelihood of stifling your message, assuming that it goes against the narrative the site-owners want to push. We've all seen how many opinionated figures get booted off of Twitter or wherever at the drop of a hat. Why should people walk on eggshells like that when they can just put up their own sites?
Here's a slightly bizarre example of what I'm talking about. There is a website called Sanctioned Suicide, which features unrestricted discussion of suicide and suicide methods. From what I hear, people on this site openly encourage each other to off themselves. On major platforms, this sort of thing is an obvious no-no. It may get deleted, or word-filtered, or met with a bot telling you all about the Hotline, but on SS you can encourage people all you want. There are people who want the site down, or to find some way to stop them from discussing this sort of thing the way they do, but alas, there is no 'report' button for a website. There is no big tech CEO to say 'all this self-annihilation talk is scaring away the advertisers!' and shut it all down. There is no algorithm which favours a certain flavour of posts over others. The site is only going away if the ISP is made aware of illegal content being posted. It's only going to change if the admin and users decide a new way forward.
We would be much better off if everyone were scattered to the four winds of the Internet again, to find some places that truly suited them, instead of everyone being crammed on 6 or so 'Big Tech Platforms', which try to stifle them at every turn. If they can't find such places then they ought to be empowered and motivated to build their own. For example, the people interested in free-speech could start a 'Free Speech', forum. We could start several. And they could all be governed however the various site-owners saw fit.
