You started with comparing usage numbers, and to me that is more about sociology and economics than tech at this point. If you’re talking about “true potential” in a vacuum, great. Functionality for the win. I don’t think using any of the others as a model, a comparison, a goal, a thought in basically any way, results in attempting to follow a path that is what I already described. “How can I be better?” vs “How can I get closer to what they are without becoming them?”

• But could we at least try to register on the scale at all, and could we do that in a way that sticks to a set of morals and ethics from the ground up of the platforms architecture?

That. I am saying I have never seen a path to that, and I don’t see it. If someone can figure out how to create a space where the world lives and grows to a size where everyone knows about it, and stays there. It never passes that level, and is able to maintain some set of ethics it was built on, and never be taken over or replaced by some massive amount of money from someone else as soon as it’s big enough to be on the radar…I feel like I just wrote an entire statement of conflicting statements. But I’d gladly say sign me up and admit I’m the asshole if it can be done that way on this planet with these humans.

if we’re going by numbers, you mentioned how many users are active on each platform. then you mentioned “Search terms like “facebook alternatives” have absolutely skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in the last couple years”. What are those numbers? Is that growth in line with what is happening in the growth of the new platforms? I don’t have that answer, but that is also not based on complete data. What I am describing is 35ish years of repeating patterns, and the realities of commerce and human nature. Every platform has followed the pattern of “die a hero, or live long enough to become the victim.” And I don’t even just mean social media, hell I don’t even just mean the Internet. Is it defeatist to say “enjoy what you have and don’t try to be just like the others since they’ve consistently followed a path that is clearly NOT what you want?” I’m all for scale, I’m all for new users. But there is a breaking point where you have to sell ads or data or die and that’s just economics. I feel like I’m being as honest about limitations as you are, I’m just applying psychology and history to it.

tl;dr: Growth good. Users and new tech good. Trying to replicate the numbers of behemoths without acknowledging the same path they all took to get there is how you create more. Or die trying due to lack of resources to maintain it.

You can’t have both. The platforms are not inherently evil, it’s the money people/corpos that run them. None of them started that way, they were all projects started by small groups, and were even fun/useful at first. Scale -> corpo attention -> buyout -> slop. That’s the cycle. It won’t change. You can enjoy the smaller shit until it either dies because it can’t be sustained, or is bought out by Monty Burns and he only knows one way to live. Either way, you’ll then have to move on to whatever the current new is if you want out.