Everyone's Packing Up

Goodbye, forever, probably.

I’m leaving developer relations and developer education. Rather than disappear completely unannounced, I wanted to tell you why.

German political parties leave X, say platform “descended into chaos”

Three German left-wing parties have announced a coordinated departure from the social media platform X, saying it has descended into chaos and promotes right-wing populist content.

Farewell Stack Exchange

I am no longer a part of Stack Exchange. I still have much literal and figurative stock in the success of Stack Exchange, of course, but as of March 1st I will no longer be part of the day to day operations of the company, or the Stack Exchange sites,

The politics of ‘platforms’

Online content providers such as YouTube are carefully positioning themselves to users, clients, advertisers and policymakers, making strategic claims for what they do and do not do, and how their place in the information landscape should be understood. One term in particular, ‘platform’, reveals the contours of this discursive work. The term has been deployed in both their populist appeals and their marketing pitches, sometimes as technical ‘platforms’, sometimes as ‘platforms’ from which to speak, sometimes as ‘platforms’ of opportunity. Whatever tensions exist in serving all of these constituencies are carefully elided. The term also fits their efforts to shape information policy, where they seek protection for facilitating user expression, yet also seek limited liability for what those users say. As these providers become the curators of public discourse, we must examine the roles they aim to play, and the terms by which they hope to be judged.

WordPress is at a Crossroads

I’ve been a WordPress user for nearly 14 years. I’ve watched as it has grown from a plucky little blogging platform struggling to compete…

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

Using nationally representative data from the 2020 and 2024 American National Election Studies (ANES), this paper describes how U.S. social media use has shifted across platforms, demographics, and politics. Overall platform reach declined, driven by growth in the share of Americans — especially the youngest and oldest cohorts — who report using no social media. Visiting and posting activity on Twitter/X and Facebook have fallen by nearly 50% since 2020, with the decline on Twitter/X driven primarily by reduced participation among Democratic users. While Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter/X lost ground, TikTok and Reddit grew modestly, consistent with a more fragmented digital public sphere. Platform audiences aged and became slightly more educated and racially diverse. Politically, most platforms shifted toward Republican users while remaining, on balance, Democratic-leaning. Twitter/X experienced the largest change: among posters, the partisan balance swung over 70 percentage points from Democrats to Republicans. Across platforms, political posting remains closely tied to affective polarization, as the most partisan respondents are also the most active. As casual users disengage while polarized partisans remain vocal, online discourse becomes narrower and more ideologically extreme.

Exit, Voice, and Platform Loyalty

A recent article by Renée DiResta is interesting for a number of different reasons.

We're Leaving Substack for Beehiiv

We're switching site and newsletter platforms. We hope you continue joining us as we grow!

The Decline of Drupal / How to Fix Drupal 8 – MikeSchinkel.com

Almost 4 years ago I wrote a controversial post entitled “17 Reasons WordPress is a Better CMS than Drupal” that caused me to be persona non grata among some of my prior Drupal friends.

My 2024 thoughts on the state of social media

I see a continued fragmentation of social media as people leave X(Twitter).

Death by a thousand likes: How Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web

Here’s one way to understand the symbiotic relationship between publications and platforms in the digital age. Publications depend on advertising dollars to keep producing content, so they need to hold readers’ attention. Big platforms like Facebook and Twitter already have plenty of attention, but they need vast quantities of content to fill up their newsfeeds. It seems natural, then, that publications have started relying on platforms to drive readership.

Effective voice: Beyond exit and affect in online communities - Seth Frey, Nathan Schneider, 2023

Online communities provide ample opportunities for user self-expression but generally lack the means for average users to exercise direct control over community...