I moved from Spacehey to FriendRewind in less than 3 weeks! Why?

Well my dears, it's actually quite simple!

It's literally just a moderation thing ૮₍ ˃ ⤙ ˂ ₎ა

Admittedly, I was much more blind going into SpaceHey than I was going into FriendRewind. And I don't think it was to a regrettable degree, my experience on SpaceHey really wasn't so bad as short as it was! But upon looking at the "Top Blog Entries" what I saw wasn't necessarily site ruining, but kinda ૮◞ ‸ ◟ ა yaknow?

Ultimately I came to SpaceHey as sort of a "replacement" for social media as I started my social media detox around that time. I no longer use MASSIVE social media websites as a primary form of connecting to people online, and the ones I do have access to (primarily YouTube) have lots of restrictions to reduce some of its more addicting features. I'm tryna protect my peace over here, and modern social media makes that very hard!

The whole appeal of a "retro social network" like this one is that they're less addicting! Plus more customizable which is an awesome bonus ૮₍˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ₎ა But of course, when you're trying to recover from addiction, it's really easy to make "replacement addictions" as a result. And so I'm out here kind of paranoid that Spacehey might become that for me.

When you're out here trying to avoid a potential addiction, you usually try to look out for signs of what could be addictive and for what reason. Sadly, I saw a lot of addictive potential in the blog tab. 

One goofy trait of the human race is that we're drawn to negativity, whether we like it or not. That's why major platforms often try to push the most enraging content towards you. It will easily get you feeling strongly, and when you're feeling strongly, you'll engage! I'm sure the blog tab on SpaceHey was not designed to function that way, but unfortunately, it has been lately.

The most popular blog posts on SpaceHey very frequently are complaints, warnings, hot takes, and rage bait. All those things (except for maybe ragebait) have a time and a place, but I don't like that they're so frequently the site's "best" stuff according to the "Top Entries" system. (Not to mention the supposed blog exploiters which doesn't help)

To make things worse, when it did come down to ragebaity/hateful content, I've come to notice myself that these things would get addressed at a painfully slow rate. It wasn't good either that a lot the posts that made the Top Blog Entries page were either complaining about this very issue, or warning people of other harmful users.

And of course, knowing that 

1. The moderation team (originally of very few people) got replaced with AI
2. The last official "Moderation and Updates" blog from An was posted almost half a year ago

REALLY didn't invoke a lot of confidence in this site's upkeep. I don't think the site is cooked forever necessarily. I don't think the site's owner locking back in and fixing these issues is out of the picture. But being a black, furry, autistic, queer woman on the internet, I would rather not wait around for weeks at a time hoping that eventually, moderation will do its job if something were to go really wrong.

When I heard about FriendRewind, I was curious, but didn't consider making an account until actually looking at the site. Now this time, I did more research about what to concern myself with when making an account. Mostly looking for bad things to see if they were things I could deal with (bc no website is perfect, but some problems are more avoidable than others). The complaints I've found were honestly pretty hard to find. There's been accusations of this being an AI slop site, but I've found just about zero evidence to that being true. At most I've seen suspicions that a few, now removed, graphics were generated with AI. The only other thing I found was a huge list of problems with this site, but the same person who posted that list later said that all those problems were addressed, which was a HUGE green flag for me. The added green flag of when I DID make an account, and saw the the creator of this site is active within it made me feel very secure. Knowing the creator is super responsive to criticism and requests is very reassuring.

Plus, added concerns about potential addiction rest quite easy now seeing that for one, the most popular stuff isn't what's shown first, and two, FriendRewind's got FILTERING
✧｡٩(ˊᗜˋ )و✧*｡ which are a girl's best friend when it comes to curating your feed (*ᵕᴗᵕ)⁾⁾

There are lots of little things about FriendRewind I prefer over Spacehey, but honestly, I wouldn't have left if it weren't for the more active developer, so that's basically why I'm moving!

Now I won't be deleting my Spacehey account or anything. Though I probably won't post anymore, there's still people that make awesome stuff, so I might check in on it occasionally to see what that's all about, but otherwise, I'll be pretty inactive ✌︎

I'm looking forward to my time here on FriendRewind!