web 2.0 brought many things. The most of which is convenience. By making things convenient, it was easier to capture an audience. To keep people on their sites for longer. To track them easier. To sell advertisements.
You know what it also is? A security flaw.
There have been countless data-breaches, hacks, and other things. Sites have to invest in ever increasing security. To protect their data. Which is always their real product. Because, big platforms are inherently more risky for data security. If you aren't using them, then basic digital hygiene is usually enough. Don't click risky links. Use an ad blocker. Don't give out personal information - practice disinformation when it comes to personal information stuff.
All of this is true. Yet, that isn't the full reason not to use these sites.
Data security isn't the only thing at risk with regards to centralization. Censorship, privacy violations, and fascistic takeover also becomes not only possible, but highly likely.
When you use a centralized service, authorities only have to go to one source to shut you down. To silence you. To find out who you are.
The internets robustness lies in its decentralized nature. The idea that anyone could make a website; to communicate with anyone else in the world. Start a blog. Write a newspaper. Make art.
Each step of centralization represents a vulnerability. It isn't just criminals that have to fear. Authoritarians have repeatedly tried to kill the internet, locking it down to walled gardens. And we see now what happens when the people in charge of these centralized services are politically and ideologically aligned to an authoritarian. Just look at what is happening between the trump administration and musk.
The internet is locked down. But its fundamental structures are still open. Anyone could still make a website. In theory, you could also host a server at home off of an old computer. ISPs are still an issue, and not one that is easy to fix. There are free and largely anonymous web-hosts as well.
You also don't have to go all in. Any step away from these large platforms is a step in the right direction. I keep up a website myself for this reason. I use open-source or shareware stuff whenever I can.
Get off of twitter. Get off of facebook. Tumblr is fine for now, but is owned by a elon fanboy, so I wouldn't be putting my hopes on him.
Youtube is a harder nut to crack. Fundamentally, video hosting is expensive. You need server space to hold the videos. You can embed a video into a website directly now-a-days with just a single line of html code. The problem is audience size. If a lot of people are watching your video, that represents a lot of information being streamed. That is a lot of bandwidth. Peertube is a thing, and it even has some discoverability features, but you still need a place to actually put the videos. Once the video is shared, it uses something not unlike torrenting so that, anyone who is watching the video, is sharing some of the effort of streaming that video to other people.
That doesn't change the fact that most of the content is on youtube. I don't use the youtube app on my phone; I just use firefox and add on some extensions to customize it. Like showing the dislikes and removing ads, and removing youtube shorts - its a huge time sink. You can also use things like freetube or NewPipe, depending on platform, to watch the videos. Support the creators you watch directly. Sponserships exist for a reason. So do things like patreon or donation links or they have their merch. Cut out youtube as a middleman, and if they have a website, bookmark it. Follow them on things like mastadon or bluesky. Get a rss feed extension for your browser and go to the channels you actually watch. Youtube subscriptions are ultimatelly just rss feeds, and you can get updates directly from your browser about them. Share them on your websites or your socials to spread word; don't rely on the algorithm to show you what you want to see.
Discord is another problem. I won't be getting rid of it myself right now, but at least it is an easier problem to find alternatives for, since messaging clients and servers have been around since even before the http protocol was even a thing. Discord is ultimately not too different to a massive irc service. You also have open-source and even peer to peer solutions that are more modern. If discord also starts being fascisty, I will encourage my contacts to move to something else.
