Because I own it

What if, Meta for instance, decided that your facebook or instagram account is not "human"? Then your photos, your memories are gone. Locked out forever. Unless you file a dispute by providing a piece of paper and a selfie to prove that you exist. Still, good luck dealing with their help support. It would be a long journey of google search, reading reddit posts, and browsing the whole web asking how to recover your account.

You basically have handled your precious memories, your thoughts, and whatever you post there (and other valuable data) to a corporation. Paradoxically, they might still keep some data of yours for themselves (or third-parties). Now it is just based upon the discretion of their saints and algorithm whether you can still rent a space on their platform. I experienced this myself. C'mon, submitting a selfie and a government ID to recover an account that has less than 50 followers. Isn't that revolting?

The "substance"

For me, at least, blogging forces you to actually think before writing down. I use Hugo with PaperMod theme for my personal blog. If you know me on a personal level, you might appreciate the blog more, though it is still viewable by virtually anyone on the internet. To setup a Hugo blog, I had to download the Hugo binary, learn the necessary commands and configure a yaml file. Then, I can write the content and push it to GitHub. It has a configured GitHub workflow provided by Hugo that automatically updates the blog every time I run the git push command. Blogging requires writing, drafting, and polishing. Then I'll have to open an IDE, run a command to create the post file, put the content there, and see if it looks well on the web. From setting up the blog to creating the content, it requires reading the documentation, proof-reading the posts, and being comfortable with slip-ups. The barrier is indeed high, so when I actually post something there, there is an actual effort and thinking spent on that post.

This is the "substance" I am talking about. Let's say you have a blog with the same setup as mine. If you're thinking about posting a specific topic or idea but you don't think it's worth the effort, is it even worth-posting to begin with? You can put your blog url on your social media bio, or share it with people who you think might actually read it. If a person who visited your social media profile see the blog link on your bio and they genuinely want to know you, they would likely open it. If not, then it's fine. No algorithm that chooses who can see which. The point is, you do it for yourself. Not for engagement or acting "cool". That is "substance".

Longevity and Posterity

My blog on its core, is just a bunch of text files and other static files. Since I use Hugo, each blog post is just a text file, written in markdown syntax. Each of them has front matter, which is the metadata block written on top of every file. Even if GitHub runs out of business, I still have the repository in my computer. I can easily move to a different hosting provider. It is also possible to get my own domain so the URLs that link to my blog wont break as it won't be dependent to the hosting provider's default domain. Though I don't find having my own custom domain necessary as the time of writing this. I can even switch to a different static-site generator if I don't want to play with Hugo anymore. I can have the images hosted within the repository itself or in the Amazon S3.

The world of computers runs on text files. 100 years from now, my posts will still be readable by computers then (if of course, someone maintains a backup). If facebook would cease to exist in that era, then your posts would be gone. Look at what happened to MySpace and Friendster. If you write posts on text files, preferably in markdown syntax for your blog, the future can read your ideas, your feelings, or whatever you write. And there is something ethereal in reading something from the past, especially if it is from an ancestor of yours. Text files do not need a dedicated special software to decode them unlike .docx.

Conclusion

I am not saying you should ditch Social Media totally. I still believe that it is a great tool if used with clear intentions (no doomscrolling!).

My two cents:

• Don't use social media as your primary backup for your photos or whatever.
• If you want to document your life, not on social media. Have it somewhere you own or at least have more control over.
• A simple blog is a great alternative. It does not have to be fancy, but functional enough.
• If you know a little bit of scripting and markdown syntax, static site generator + static site hosting is top-tier.
• Backing up your files is also crucial. Almost any reliable cloud provider you've heard of is a good choice.