My guide to ethical posting in 2024

Should you post to the Nazi platform or the genocide platform or the viral trash platform or the weirdos platform etc.

Hiya! How have you been?

A viral image on Facebook in case you wondered how things are going over there

I’m writing from a secret location where I’ve been locked down working on project that I should be able to say more about soon. But, for now, I’m breaking out of my shackles to share something that’s been percolating in my mind for a while now: 

How can you ethically and sustainably post in 2024?

I have been tweeting for exactly half my life. I have very fond feelings towards Twitter even though people called it the hell site. Now, it is a neo-Nazi safehaven called X run by a racist conspiracy theory promoting cringelord. It’s not the only platform with bad vibes: other major tech platforms facilitated ethnic cleansing, house neo-Nazis, aren’t particularly popular or have uncertain futures. 

There are personal, professional and broader stakes for the choice of where to post. I like to post. I like to read, see or watch other people’s posts and want others to be able to do the same to my posts. It makes me feel happy and better informed (don’t care if that isn’t true, it feels like it to me).

Being able to reach an audience is important to my theory of journalism — it’s about finding out things and telling it to as many people as possible so they can make good decisions — and, pragmatically, being on social media has helped me find stories, sources and jobs. Presumably other professions benefit too.

More importantly for “society”, I don’t want to be the reason that other people stay on bad sites nor do I want to help those bad sites continue to be bad by allowing them to monetize me etc. I think they’re hurting the way we interact with each other and promote the worst, most scared and hateful parts of ourselves.

The broader impact of posting is important because I’ve noticed a creeping sense of nihilism when it comes to an individuals’ role in propping up systems. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism yada yada yada. I get it, but like, that doesn’t give you permission to act as if nothing you do matters. Don’t spend your spare time throwing used batteries in the ocean because other people litter. It particularly matters for social media platforms that rely on the allure of people as a network effect to keep people coming back. Choosing how we spend our time and more is an important lever even if it isn’t the only one we have.

I’ve come up with two guiding principles to help me work through these sometimes contradictory stakes. The first is that I want to free myself from the grasp of any one platform or company. I want to have the ability to stop using a platform or use it less because it’s not a good place to post any more. I also want to make it so that people who want to follow me don’t have to use a platform they don’t want to.

My solution to this is crossposting content across different platforms. Like hedging your bets, this gives me stability in case, oh I don’t know, a tech company’s owner suddenly decides that a normal term is a slur because their daughter is trans and makes it against the platform’s policies. Send your content everywhere so you don’t depend on any one place. It makes even more sense in the stratified post-Elon Twitter exodus as audiences have spread out across different places.

The other principle is a bias towards platforms that are more open and give more control to their users. Obviously, algorithmic social media has its benefits but, for a creator, it weakens the relationship to the people who want to see what I make. Connecting with my audience through email, RSS and the fediverse (lol, who names these things man) is a deeper, more direct connection than a follow on Instagram. Using platforms that rely on open formats means that I can up and leave without losing everything.

So here’s what I do: I’m crossposting using a free tool called Fedica which allows me to post simultaneously to Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon, Facebook, LinkedIn and, soon, Threads. 

However, I don’t just blast out the same message to every platform like a guy repeating the same joke he talks to. Each platform has their own vibe (I’m still not game enough to shitpost to LinkedIn, sorry) and it’s jarring and IMO disrespectful to your audience when you don’t pay attention to those norms. Some posts end up on some platforms, other times I alter the post content depending on where it’s going to end up.

I’m also really limiting my crossposting to Twitter because I don’t want to support it anymore, despite having the majority of my followers there. I do sometimes when I decide it’s important to reach the max amount of people — although I do think there’s a very compelling case that people should leave it — but also, importantly, these posts all go other places so no one thinks that they need to stay on it for me.

I’m also thinking about other ways to extricate myself from any one platform. For example, I built my own website recently which has a CamFeed™ which pulls from my various accounts so someone can see all the stuff I’ve been doing without having to be across 8 different places. The best part? You don’t even need to go to it. You can subscribe to my CamFeed on any RSS reader here or just visit it in your browser. (I’ve been toying around about making a CamApp hehe).

It’s not a perfect system and it’s not a pure one. I am still supporting companies who suck! But it’s one I can live with. I feel like I’m removing myself from the hold that some of these places have over me, which I hope will prompt others to do the same, while supporting technologies and platforms that are good. And, importantly, it just lets me fire off dumb posts without thinking too much about it which is really the goal.

Curious to hear what you think about it and your own posting.

Love,

CW